Multi-player and multi-round auctions with severely bounded communication

Liad Blumrosen*, Noam Nisan, Ilya Segal

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingChapterpeer-review

3 Scopus citations

Abstract

We study auctions in which bidders have severe constraints on the size of messages they are allowed to send to the auctioneer. In such auctions, each bidder has a set of k possible bids (i.e. he can send up to t = log(k) bits to the mechanism). This paper studies the loss of economic efficiency and revenue in such mechanisms, compared with the case of unconstrained communication. For any number of players, we present auctions that incur an efficiency loss and a revenue loss of O(1/k2), and we show that this upper bound is tight. When we allow the players to send their bits sequentially, we can construct even more efficient mechanisms, but only up to a factor of 2 in the amount of communication needed. We also show that when the players' valuations for the item are not independently distributed, we cannot do much better than a trivial mechanism.

Original languageAmerican English
Title of host publicationLecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)
EditorsGiuseppe di Battista, Uri Zwick
PublisherSpringer Verlag
Pages102-113
Number of pages12
ISBN (Print)3540200649, 9783540200642
DOIs
StatePublished - 2003

Publication series

NameLecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)
Volume2832
ISSN (Print)0302-9743
ISSN (Electronic)1611-3349

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Multi-player and multi-round auctions with severely bounded communication'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this