research-article

Prior-independent auctions for risk-averse agents

Authors:

Jason Hartline,

Darrell HoyAuthors Info & Claims

EC '13: Proceedings of the fourteenth ACM conference on Electronic commerce

Pages 471 - 488

https://doi.org/10.1145/2492002.2482551

Published: 16 June 2013 Publication History

Abstract

We study simple and approximately optimal auctions for agents with a particular form of risk-averse preferences. We show that, for symmetric agents, the optimal revenue (given a prior distribution over the agent preferences) can be approximated by the first-price auction (which is prior independent), and, for asymmetric agents, the optimal revenue can be approximated by an auction with simple form. These results are based on two technical methods. The first is for upper-bounding the revenue from a risk-averse agent. The second gives a payment identity for mechanisms with pay-your-bid semantics.

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Cited By

Provodin DJoudioux JDuryev E(2024)Bandits for Sponsored Search Auctions Under Unknown Valuation Model: Case Study in E-Commerce AdvertisingMachine Learning and Knowledge Discovery in Databases. Applied Data Science Track10.1007/978-3-031-70381-2_17(263-279)Online publication date: 22-Aug-2024
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-70381-2_17
Feng YHartline JLi YKarlin AImmorlica NJohari R(2019)Optimal Auctions vs. Anonymous PricingProceedings of the 2019 ACM Conference on Economics and Computation10.1145/3328526.3329603(885-886)Online publication date: 17-Jun-2019
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3328526.3329603
Jin YLi WQi Q(2019)On the Approximability of Simple Mechanisms for MHR DistributionsWeb and Internet Economics10.1007/978-3-030-35389-6_17(228-240)Online publication date: 3-Dec-2019
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-35389-6_17
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Index Terms

Prior-independent auctions for risk-averse agents
1. Applied computing
  1. Law, social and behavioral sciences
    1. Economics

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Published In

cover image ACM Conferences

EC '13: Proceedings of the fourteenth ACM conference on Electronic commerce

June 2013

924 pages

ISBN:9781450319621

DOI:10.1145/2492002

General Chair:
Michael Kearns
University of Pennsylvania., USA
,
Program Chairs:
Preston McAfee
Google, USA
,
Éva Tardos
Cornell University, USA

Copyright © 2013 ACM.

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SIGecom: Special Interest Group on Economics and Computation

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 16 June 2013

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EC '13

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SIGecom

EC '13: ACM Conference on Electronic Commerce

June 16 - 20, 2013

Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA

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EC '13 Paper Acceptance Rate 72 of 223 submissions, 32%;

Overall Acceptance Rate 664 of 2,389 submissions, 28%

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Citations

Cited By

Provodin DJoudioux JDuryev E(2024)Bandits for Sponsored Search Auctions Under Unknown Valuation Model: Case Study in E-Commerce AdvertisingMachine Learning and Knowledge Discovery in Databases. Applied Data Science Track10.1007/978-3-031-70381-2_17(263-279)Online publication date: 22-Aug-2024
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-70381-2_17
Feng YHartline JLi YKarlin AImmorlica NJohari R(2019)Optimal Auctions vs. Anonymous PricingProceedings of the 2019 ACM Conference on Economics and Computation10.1145/3328526.3329603(885-886)Online publication date: 17-Jun-2019
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3328526.3329603
Jin YLi WQi Q(2019)On the Approximability of Simple Mechanisms for MHR DistributionsWeb and Internet Economics10.1007/978-3-030-35389-6_17(228-240)Online publication date: 3-Dec-2019
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-35389-6_17
Liu SMiller JPsomas A(2019)Risk Robust Mechanism Design for a Prospect Theoretic BuyerAlgorithmic Game Theory10.1007/978-3-030-30473-7_7(95-108)Online publication date: 16-Sep-2019
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-30473-7_7
Chawla SGoldner KMiller JPountourakis ECzumaj A(2018)Revenue maximization with an uncertainty-averse buyerProceedings of the Twenty-Ninth Annual ACM-SIAM Symposium on Discrete Algorithms10.5555/3174304.3175439(2050-2068)Online publication date: 7-Jan-2018
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/3174304.3175439
Tang PZeng YTardos EElkind EVohra R(2018)The Price of Prior Dependence in AuctionsProceedings of the 2018 ACM Conference on Economics and Computation10.1145/3219166.3219183(485-502)Online publication date: 11-Jun-2018
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3219166.3219183
Feng YHartline J(2018)An End-to-End Argument in Mechanism Design (Prior-Independent Auctions for Budgeted Agents)2018 IEEE 59th Annual Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science (FOCS)10.1109/FOCS.2018.00046(404-415)Online publication date: Oct-2018
https://doi.org/10.1109/FOCS.2018.00046
Nikolova EPountourakis EYang G(2018)Optimal Mechanism Design with Risk-Loving AgentsWeb and Internet Economics10.1007/978-3-030-04612-5_25(375-392)Online publication date: 21-Nov-2018
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-04612-5_25
Roughgarden TSyrgkanis VTardos É(2017)The price of anarchy in auctionsJournal of Artificial Intelligence Research10.5555/3176788.317679059:1(59-101)Online publication date: 1-May-2017
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/3176788.3176790
Hoefer MKesselheim TVöcking B(2016)Truthfulness and Stochastic Dominance with Monetary TransfersACM Transactions on Economics and Computation10.1145/28475224:2(1-18)Online publication date: 3-Feb-2016
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2847522
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