Truthful randomized mechanisms for combinatorial auctions

Shahar Dobzinski; Noam Nisan; Michael Schapira

doi:10.1145/1132516.1132607

Truthful randomized mechanisms for combinatorial auctions

Shahar Dobzinski^*, Noam Nisan, Michael Schapira

^*Corresponding author for this work

The Rachel and Selim Benin School of Engineering and Computer Science

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Conference contribution › peer-review

100 Scopus citations

Abstract

We design two computationally-efficient incentive-compatible mechanisms for combinatorial auctions with general bidder preferences. Both mechanisms are randomized, and are incentive-compatible in the universal sense. This is in contrast to recent previous work that only addresses the weaker notion of incentive compatibility in expectation. The first mechanism obtains an O(√m)-approximation of the optimal social welfare for arbitrary bidder valuations - this is the best approximation possible in polynomial time. The second one obtains an O(log² m)-approximation for a subclass of bidder valuations that includes all submodular bidders. This improves over the best previously obtained incentive-compatible mechanism for this class which only provides an O(√m)-approximation.

Original language	American English
Title of host publication	STOC'06
Subtitle of host publication	Proceedings of the 38th Annual ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing
Publisher	Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)
Pages	644-652
Number of pages	9
ISBN (Print)	1595931341, 9781595931344
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1145/1132516.1132607
State	Published - 2006
Event	38th Annual ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing, STOC'06 - Seattle, WA, United States Duration: 21 May 2006 → 23 May 2006

Publication series

Name	Proceedings of the Annual ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing
Volume	2006
ISSN (Print)	0737-8017

Conference

Conference	38th Annual ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing, STOC'06
Country/Territory	United States
City	Seattle, WA
Period	21/05/06 → 23/05/06

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
We thank Moshe Babaioff, Liad Blumrosen, Uri Feige, Ron Lavi, Ahuva Mu’alem, and Chaitanya Swamy for helpful discussions and comments. The second author is supported by a grant from the Israeli Academy of Sciences. The third author is supported by NSF grant 0331548. The work was partially done when the first and third authors were in the Hebrew University and were supported by a grant from the Israeli Academy of Sciences. A preliminary version of this paper appeared in STOC’06.

Keywords

Combinatorial Auctions
Incentive Compatibility

Access to Document

10.1145/1132516.1132607

Cite this

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title = "Truthful randomized mechanisms for combinatorial auctions",

abstract = "We design two computationally-efficient incentive-compatible mechanisms for combinatorial auctions with general bidder preferences. Both mechanisms are randomized, and are incentive-compatible in the universal sense. This is in contrast to recent previous work that only addresses the weaker notion of incentive compatibility in expectation. The first mechanism obtains an O(√m)-approximation of the optimal social welfare for arbitrary bidder valuations - this is the best approximation possible in polynomial time. The second one obtains an O(log2 m)-approximation for a subclass of bidder valuations that includes all submodular bidders. This improves over the best previously obtained incentive-compatible mechanism for this class which only provides an O(√m)-approximation.",

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language = "American English",

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Dobzinski, S, Nisan, N & Schapira, M 2006, Truthful randomized mechanisms for combinatorial auctions. in STOC'06: Proceedings of the 38th Annual ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing. Proceedings of the Annual ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing, vol. 2006, Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), pp. 644-652, 38th Annual ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing, STOC'06, Seattle, WA, United States, 21/05/06. https://doi.org/10.1145/1132516.1132607

Truthful randomized mechanisms for combinatorial auctions. / Dobzinski, Shahar; Nisan, Noam ; Schapira, Michael.
STOC'06: Proceedings of the 38th Annual ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing. Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), 2006. p. 644-652 (Proceedings of the Annual ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing; Vol. 2006).

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Conference contribution › peer-review

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KW - Incentive Compatibility

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ER -

Truthful randomized mechanisms for combinatorial auctions

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Bibliographical note

Keywords

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