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215
Winner determination in combinatorial auction generalizations
, 2002
"... Combinatorial markets where bids can be submitted on bundles of items can be economically desirable coordination mechanisms in multiagent systems where the items exhibit complementarity and substitutability. There has been a surge of recent research on winner determination in combinatorial auctions. ..."
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Cited by 175 (23 self)
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Combinatorial markets where bids can be submitted on bundles of items can be economically desirable coordination mechanisms in multiagent systems where the items exhibit complementarity and substitutability. There has been a surge of recent research on winner determination in combinatorial auctions. In this paper we study a wider range of combinatorial market designs: auctions, reverse auctions, and exchanges, with one or multiple units of each item, with and without free disposal. We first theoretically characterize the complexity. The most interesting results are that reverse auctions with free disposal can be approximated, and in all of the cases without free disposal, even finding a feasible solution is ÆÈ-complete. We then ran experiments on known benchmarks as well as ones which we introduced, to study the complexity of the market variants in practice. Cases with free disposal tended to be easier than ones without. On many distributions, reverse auctions with free disposal were easier than auctions with free disposal— as the approximability would suggest—but interestingly, on one of the most realistic distributions they were harder. Single-unit exchanges were easy, but multi-unit exchanges were extremely hard. 1
Towards a universal test suite for combinatorial auction algorithms
- In ACM Electronic Commerce
, 2000
"... General combinatorial auctions—auctions in which bidders place unrestricted bids for bundles of goods—are the subject of increasing study. Much of this work has focused on algorithms for finding an optimal or approximately optimal set of winning bids. Comparatively little attention has been paid to ..."
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Cited by 162 (11 self)
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General combinatorial auctions—auctions in which bidders place unrestricted bids for bundles of goods—are the subject of increasing study. Much of this work has focused on algorithms for finding an optimal or approximately optimal set of winning bids. Comparatively little attention has been paid to methodical evaluation and comparison of these algorithms. In particular, there has not been a systematic discussion of appropriate data sets that can serve as universally accepted and well motivated benchmarks. In this paper we present a suite of distribution families for generating realistic, economically motivated combinatorial bids in five broad real-world domains. We hope that this work will yield many comments, criticisms and extensions, bringing the community closer to a universal combinatorial auction test suite.
Nash Equilibria in Competitive Societies, with Applications to Facility Location, Traffic Routing and Auction
, 2002
"... We consider the following class of problems. The value of an outcome to a society is measured via a submodular utility function (submodularity has a natural economic interpretation: decreasing marginal utility). Decisions, however are controlled by noncooperative agents who seek to maximise their ..."
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Cited by 124 (6 self)
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We consider the following class of problems. The value of an outcome to a society is measured via a submodular utility function (submodularity has a natural economic interpretation: decreasing marginal utility). Decisions, however are controlled by noncooperative agents who seek to maximise their own private utility. We present, under some basic assumptions, guarantees on the social performance of Nash equilibria. For submodular utility functions, any Nash equilibrium gives an expected social utility within a factor 2 of optimal, subject to a function-dependent additive term. For non-decreasing, submodular utility functions, any Nash equilibrium gives an expected social utility within a factor 1 + of optimal, where 0 1 is a number based upon the discrete curvature of the function. A condition under which all sets of social and private utility functions induce pure strategy Nash equilibria is presented. The case in which agents, themselves, make use of approximation algorithms in decision making is discussed and performance guarantees given. Finally we present some specific problems that fall into our framework. These include the competitive versions of the facility location problem and k-median problem, a maximisation version of the traffic routing problem of Roughgarden and Tardos [16], and multiple-item auctions.
Frugal path mechanisms
, 2002
"... We consider the problem of selecting a low cost s − t path in a graph, where the edge costs are a secret known only to the various economic agents who own them. To solve this problem, Nisan and Ronen applied the celebrated Vickrey-Clarke-Groves (VCG) mechanism, which pays a premium to induce the edg ..."
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Cited by 119 (2 self)
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We consider the problem of selecting a low cost s − t path in a graph, where the edge costs are a secret known only to the various economic agents who own them. To solve this problem, Nisan and Ronen applied the celebrated Vickrey-Clarke-Groves (VCG) mechanism, which pays a premium to induce the edges to reveal their costs truthfully. We observe that this premium can be unacceptably high. There are simple instances where the mechanism pays Θ(k) times the actual cost of the path, even if there is an alternate path available that costs only (1 + ɛ) times as much. This inspires the frugal path problem, which is to design a mechanism that selects a path and induces truthful cost revelation without paying such a high premium. This paper contributes negative results on the frugal path problem. On two large classes of graphs, including ones having three node-disjoint s − t paths, we prove that no reasonable mechanism can always avoid paying a high premium to induce truthtelling. In particular, we introduce a general class of min function mechanisms, and show that all min function mechanisms can be forced to overpay just as badly as VCG. On the other hand, we prove that (on two large classes of graphs) every truthful mechanism satisfying some reasonable properties is a min function mechanism. 1
On agent-mediated electronic commerce
- IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering
, 2003
"... Abstract—This paper surveys and analyzes the state of the art of agent-mediated electronic commerce (e-commerce), concentrating particularly on the business-to-consumer (B2C) and business-to-business (B2B) aspects. From the consumer buying behavior perspective, agents are being used in the following ..."
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Cited by 111 (15 self)
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Abstract—This paper surveys and analyzes the state of the art of agent-mediated electronic commerce (e-commerce), concentrating particularly on the business-to-consumer (B2C) and business-to-business (B2B) aspects. From the consumer buying behavior perspective, agents are being used in the following activities: need identification, product brokering, buyer coalition formation, merchant brokering, and negotiation. The roles of agents in B2B e-commerce are discussed through the business-to-business transaction model that identifies agents as being employed in partnership formation, brokering, and negotiation. Having identified the roles for agents in B2C and B2B e-commerce, some of the key underpinning technologies of this vision are highlighted. Finally, we conclude by discussing the future directions and potential impediments to the wide-scale adoption of agent-mediated e-commerce. Index Terms—Agent-mediated electronic commerce, intelligent agents. 1
Consensus-based decentralized auctions for robust task allocation
- IEEE Transactions on Robotics
, 2009
"... Abstract—This paper addresses task allocation to coordinate a fleet of autonomous vehicles by presenting two decentralized algorithms: the consensus-based auction algorithm (CBAA) and its generalization to the multi-assignment problem, i.e., the consensus-based bundle algorithm (CBBA). These algorit ..."
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Cited by 79 (28 self)
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Abstract—This paper addresses task allocation to coordinate a fleet of autonomous vehicles by presenting two decentralized algorithms: the consensus-based auction algorithm (CBAA) and its generalization to the multi-assignment problem, i.e., the consensus-based bundle algorithm (CBBA). These algorithms utilize a market-based decision strategy as the mechanism for decentralized task selection and use a consensus routine based on local communication as the conflict resolution mechanism to achieve agreement on the winning bid values. Under reasonable assumptions on the scoring scheme, both of the proposed algorithms are proven to guarantee convergence to a conflict-free assignment, and it is shown that the converged solutions exhibit provable worst-case performance. It is also demonstrated that CBAA and CBBA produce conflict-free feasible solutions that are robust to both inconsistencies in the situational awareness across the fleet and variations in the communication network topology. Numerical experiments confirm superior convergence properties and performance when compared with existing auction-based task-allocation algorithms. Index Terms—Distributed robot systems, networked robots, task allocation for multiple mobile robots. I.
Mirage: A Microeconomic Resource Allocation System for Sensornet Testbeds
- In Proceedings of the 2nd IEEE Workshop on Embedded Networked Sensors
, 2005
"... technical challenges of wireless SensorNets. As the size and demand for these testbeds grow, resource management will become increasingly important to the effectiveness of these environments. In this paper, we argue that a microeconomic resource allocation scheme, specifically the combinatorial auct ..."
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Cited by 78 (7 self)
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technical challenges of wireless SensorNets. As the size and demand for these testbeds grow, resource management will become increasingly important to the effectiveness of these environments. In this paper, we argue that a microeconomic resource allocation scheme, specifically the combinatorial auction, is well suited to testbed resource management. To demonstrate this, we present the Mirage resource allocation system. In Mirage, testbed resources are allocated using a repeated combinatorial auction within a closed virtual currency environment. Users compete for testbed resources by submitting bids which specify resource combinations of interest in space/time (e.g., "any 32 MICA2 motes for 8 hours anytime in the next three days") along with a maximum value amount the user is willing to pay. A combinatorial auction is then periodically run to determine the winning bids based on supply and demand while maximizing aggregate utility delivered to users. We have implemented a fully functional and secure prototype of Mirage and have been operating it in daily use for approximately two months on Intel Research Berkeley's 148-mote SensorNet testbed.
Approximately-Strategyproof and Tractable Multi-Unit Auctions
, 2004
"... We present an approximately-efficient and approximately-strategyproof auction mechanism for a single-good multi-unit allocation problem. The bidding language allows marginaldecreasing piecewise constant curves and quantity-based side constraints. We develop a fully polynomial-time approximation sch ..."
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Cited by 61 (11 self)
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We present an approximately-efficient and approximately-strategyproof auction mechanism for a single-good multi-unit allocation problem. The bidding language allows marginaldecreasing piecewise constant curves and quantity-based side constraints. We develop a fully polynomial-time approximation scheme for the multi-unit allocation problem, which computes a -approximation in worst-case time , given bids each with a constant number of pieces. We integrate this approximation scheme within a VickreyClarke -Groves mechanism and compute payments for an asymptotic cost of ! . The maximal possible gain from manipulation to a bidder in the combined scheme is bounded by 4294-16716 " is the total surplus in the efficient outcome.
Privad: Practical Privacy in Online Advertising
"... Online advertising is a major economic force in the Internet today, funding a wide variety of websites and services. Today’s deployments, however, erode privacy and degrade performance as browsers wait for ad networks to deliver ads. This paper presents Privad, an online advertising system designed ..."
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Cited by 57 (3 self)
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Online advertising is a major economic force in the Internet today, funding a wide variety of websites and services. Today’s deployments, however, erode privacy and degrade performance as browsers wait for ad networks to deliver ads. This paper presents Privad, an online advertising system designed to be faster and more private than existing systems while filling the practical market needs of targeted advertising: ads shown in web pages; targeting based on keywords, demographics, and interests; ranking based on auctions; view and click accounting; and defense against click-fraud. Privad occupies a point in the design space that strikes a balance between privacy and practical considerations. This paper presents the design of Privad, and analyzes the pros and cons of various design decisions. It provides an informal analysis of the privacy properties of Privad. Based on microbenchmarks and traces from a production advertising platform, it shows that Privad scales to present-day needs while simultaneously improving users ’ browsing experience and lowering infrastructure costs for the ad network. Finally, it reports on our implementation of Privad and deployment of over two thousand clients. 1
