Darja Krushevskaja, a PhD student at Rutgers University

Title: Cardinal Auctions

Abstract: We study cardinal auctions in which bidders specify not only their bid for how much they pay for the allocation, but also a cardinal constraint on the number of items that will be sold via the auction. There are two natural auctions for this setting, one based on Vickrey-Clarke-Groves (VCG), and the other based on minimum pay property (MPP). We perform detailed analyses of VCG vs MPP for efficiency as well as revenue in equilibrium, for rational and conservative bidders, and show PoA type results. For example, we show that equilibrium efficiency of MPP is at least 1/2 of that of VCG for rational bidders which contrasts with PoA of 1 without cardinal constraints.


Darja Krushevskaja
Rutgers: http://www.cs.rutgers.edu/