Informational limitations of ascending combinatorial auctions

Liad Blumrosen; Noam Nisan

doi:10.1016/j.jet.2009.10.012

Informational limitations of ascending combinatorial auctions

Liad Blumrosen^*, Noam Nisan

^*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

13 Scopus citations

Abstract

We study the inherent limitations of natural widely-used classes of ascending combinatorial auctions. Specifically, we show that ascending combinatorial auctions that do not use both non-linear prices and personalized prices cannot achieve social efficiency with general bidder valuations. We also show that the loss of efficiency can be severe and that only a diminishing fraction of the social welfare may be captured. This justifies the added complexity in the auctions suggested by, e.g., Parkes and Ungar (2000) [29] and Ausubel and Milgrom (2002) [2].

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	1203-1223
Number of pages	21
Journal	Journal of Economic Theory
Volume	145
Issue number	3
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jet.2009.10.012
State	Published - May 2010

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
✩ Authors were supported by grants from the Israeli Academy of Sciences and the USA–Israel Binational Science Foundation. The authors thank Moshe Babaioff, Ron Lavi, Daniel Lehmann, David Parkes and Ilya Segal for helpful discussions. * Corresponding author. Fax: +972 2 5883244. E-mail addresses: [email protected] (L. Blumrosen), [email protected] (N. Nisan).

Keywords

Ascending auctions
Auctions
Combinatorial auctions
Non-linear prices
Package auctions
Personalized prices

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10.1016/j.jet.2009.10.012

Cite this

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title = "Informational limitations of ascending combinatorial auctions",

abstract = "We study the inherent limitations of natural widely-used classes of ascending combinatorial auctions. Specifically, we show that ascending combinatorial auctions that do not use both non-linear prices and personalized prices cannot achieve social efficiency with general bidder valuations. We also show that the loss of efficiency can be severe and that only a diminishing fraction of the social welfare may be captured. This justifies the added complexity in the auctions suggested by, e.g., Parkes and Ungar (2000) [29] and Ausubel and Milgrom (2002) [2].",

keywords = "Ascending auctions, Auctions, Combinatorial auctions, Non-linear prices, Package auctions, Personalized prices",

author = "Liad Blumrosen and Noam Nisan",

note = "Funding Information: ✩ Authors were supported by grants from the Israeli Academy of Sciences and the USA–Israel Binational Science Foundation. The authors thank Moshe Babaioff, Ron Lavi, Daniel Lehmann, David Parkes and Ilya Segal for helpful discussions. * Corresponding author. Fax: +972 2 5883244. E-mail addresses: [email protected] (L. Blumrosen), [email protected] (N. Nisan).",

year = "2010",

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KW - Package auctions

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Informational limitations of ascending combinatorial auctions

Abstract

Bibliographical note

Keywords

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