Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Pricing Multi-unit Markets

  • Conference paper
  • First Online:
Web and Internet Economics (WINE 2018)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNISA,volume 11316))

Included in the following conference series:

Abstract

We study the power and limitations of posted prices in multi-unit markets, where agents arrive sequentially in an arbitrary order. We prove upper and lower bounds on the largest fraction of the optimal social welfare that can be guaranteed with posted prices, under a range of assumptions about the designer’s information and agents’ valuations. Our results provide insights about the relative power of uniform and non-uniform prices, the relative difficulty of different valuation classes, and the implications of different informational assumptions. Among other results, we prove constant-factor guarantees for agents with (symmetric) subadditive valuations, even in an incomplete-information setting and with uniform prices.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 39.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. 1.

    For examples involving identical items, think about general-admission concert tickets, pizzas at Una Pizza Napoletana (which shuts down for the night when the dough runs out), or shares in an IPO (other than Google [33]).

  2. 2.

    No non-trivial guarantees are possible without at least partial knowledge about agents’ valuations.

References

  1. Ausubel, L.M.: An efficient ascending-bid auction for multiple objects. Am. Econ. Rev. 94(5), 1452–1475 (2004)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  2. Babaioff, M., Blumrosen, L., Dughmi, S., Singer, Y.: Posting prices with unknown distributions. In: Proceedings of the 1st Innovations in Computer Science, pp. 166–178 (2011)

    Google Scholar 

  3. Babaioff, M., Dughmi, S., Kleinberg, R., Slivkins, A.: Dynamic pricing with limited supply. ACM Trans. Econ. Comput. 3(1), 4:1–4:26 (2015)

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  4. Babaioff, M., Immorlica, N., Lucier, B., Weinberg, S.M.: A simple and approximately optimal mechanism for an additive buyer. In: Proceedings of the 55th IEEE Annual Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science, pp. 21–30 (2014)

    Google Scholar 

  5. Bateni, M.H., Dehghani, S., Hajiaghayi, M.T., Seddighin, S.: Revenue maximization for selling multiple correlated items. In: Bansal, N., Finocchi, I. (eds.) ESA 2015. LNCS, vol. 9294, pp. 95–105. Springer, Heidelberg (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-48350-3_9

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  6. Bhawalkar, K., Roughgarden, T.: Simultaneous single-item auctions. In: Goldberg, P.W. (ed.) WINE 2012. LNCS, vol. 7695, pp. 337–349. Springer, Heidelberg (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-35311-6_25

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  7. Blumrosen, L., Holenstein, T.: Posted prices vs. negotiations: an asymptotic analysis. In: Proceedings of the 9th ACM Conference on Electronic Commerce, p. 49 (2008)

    Google Scholar 

  8. Chawla, S., Hartline, J.D., Kleinberg, R.D.: Algorithmic pricing via virtual valuations. In: Proceedings of the 8th ACM Conference on Electronic Commerce, pp. 243–251 (2007)

    Google Scholar 

  9. Chawla, S., Hartline, J.D., Malec, D.L., Sivan, B.: Multi-parameter mechanism design and sequential posted pricing. In: Proceedings of the 42nd ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing, pp. 311–320 (2010)

    Google Scholar 

  10. Chawla, S., Malec, D.L., Sivan, B.: The power of randomness in Bayesian optimal mechanism design. In: Proceedings of the 11th ACM Conference on Electronic Commerce, pp. 149–158 (2010)

    Google Scholar 

  11. Christodoulou, G., Kovács, A., Schapira, M.: Bayesian combinatorial auctions. In: Aceto, L., Damgård, I., Goldberg, L.A., Halldórsson, M.M., Ingólfsdóttir, A., Walukiewicz, I. (eds.) ICALP 2008. LNCS, vol. 5125, pp. 820–832. Springer, Heidelberg (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-70575-8_67

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  12. Cohen, I.R., Eden, A., Fiat, A., Jez, L.: Pricing online decisions: beyond auctions. In: Proceedings of the 26th Annual ACM-SIAM Symposium on Discrete Algorithms, pp. 73–91 (2015)

    Google Scholar 

  13. Cohen-Addad, V., Eden, A., Feldman, M., Fiat, A.: The invisible hand of dynamic market pricing. In: Proceedings of the 2016 ACM Conference on Economics and Computation, pp. 383–400 (2016)

    Google Scholar 

  14. Dütting, P., Feldman, M., Kesselheim, T., Lucier, B.: Posted prices, smoothness, and combinatorial prophet inequalities. In: Proceedings of the 58th IEEE Annual Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science, pp. 540–551 (2017)

    Google Scholar 

  15. Edelman, B., Ostrovsky, M., Schwarz, M.: Internet advertising and the generalized second-price auction: selling billions of dollars worth of keywords. Am. Econ. Rev. 97(1), 242–259 (2007)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  16. Eden, A., Feige, U., Feldman, M.: Max-min greedy matching. arXiv preprint (2018). http://arxiv.org/abs/1803.05501

  17. Eden, A., Feldman, M., Friedler, O., Talgam-Cohen, I., Weinberg, S.M.: A simple and approximately optimal mechanism for a buyer with complements. In: Proceedings of the 2017 ACM Conference on Economics and Computation, p. 323 (2017)

    Google Scholar 

  18. Ezra, T., Feldman, M., Roughgarden, T., Suksompong, W.: Pricing multi-unit markets. arXiv preprint (2018). http://arxiv.org/abs/1705.06623

  19. Feige, U.: On maximizing welfare when utility functions are subadditive. SIAM J. Comput. 39(1), 122–142 (2009)

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  20. Feldman, M., Fu, H., Gravin, N., Lucier, B.: Simultaneous auctions are (almost) efficient. In: Proceedings of the 45th Symposium on Theory of Computing, pp. 201–210 (2013)

    Google Scholar 

  21. Feldman, M., Gravin, N., Lucier, B.: Combinatorial auctions via posted prices. In: Proceedings of the 26th Annual ACM-SIAM Symposium on Discrete Algorithms, pp. 123–135 (2015)

    Google Scholar 

  22. Friedman, M.: How to sell government securities. Wall Street J. A8 (1991)

    Google Scholar 

  23. Hajiaghayi, M.T., Kleinberg, R., Parkes, D.C.: Adaptive limited-supply online auctions. In: Proceedings of the 5th ACM Conference on Electronic Commerce, pp. 71–80 (2004)

    Google Scholar 

  24. Hassidim, A., Kaplan, H., Mansour, Y., Nisan, N.: Non-price equilibria in markets of discrete goods. In: Proceedings of the 12th ACM Conference on Electronic Commerce, pp. 295–296 (2011)

    Google Scholar 

  25. Kelso Jr., A.S., Crawford, V.P.: Job matching, coalition formation, and gross substitutes. Econometrica 50(6), 1483–1504 (1982)

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  26. Lehmann, B., Lehmann, D.J., Nisan, N.: Combinatorial auctions with decreasing marginal utilities. Games Econ. Behav. 55(2), 270–296 (2006)

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  27. Lucier, B., Paes Leme, R.: GSP auctions with correlated types. In: Proceedings of the 12th ACM Conference on Electronic Commerce, pp. 71–80 (2011)

    Google Scholar 

  28. Lucier, B., Paes Leme, R., Tardos, É.: On revenue in the generalized second price auction. In: Proceedings of the 21st World Wide Web Conference, pp. 361–370 (2012)

    Google Scholar 

  29. Markakis, E., Telelis, O.: Uniform price auctions: equilibria and efficiency. Theory Comput. Syst. 57(3), 549–575 (2015)

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  30. Nisan, N.: Algorithmic mechanism design through the lens of multi-unit auctions, Chap. 9. In: Young, H.P., Zamir, S. (eds.) Handbook of Game Theory with Economic Applications, vol. 4, pp. 477–515. Elsevier (2015)

    Google Scholar 

  31. Paes Leme, R., Tardos, É: Pure and Bayes-Nash price of anarchy for generalized second price auction. In: Proceedings of the 51st Annual IEEE Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science, pp. 735–744 (2010)

    Google Scholar 

  32. Parkes, D.C.: Online mechanisms, Chap. 16. In: Nisan, N., Roughgarden, T., Tardos, É., Vazirani, V. (eds.) Algorithmic Game Theory, pp. 411–439. Cambridge University Press (2007)

    Google Scholar 

  33. Ritter, J.: Google’s IPO, 10 years later (2014). http://www.forbes.com/sites/jayritter/2014/08/07/googles-ipo-10-years-later. Accessed 09 Feb 2017

  34. Varian, H.R.: Position auctions. Int. J. Ind. Org. 25(6), 1163–1178 (2007)

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Blavatnik School of Computer Science, Tel-Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel

    Tomer Ezra & Michal Feldman

  2. Department of Computer Science, Stanford University, Stanford, USA

    Tim Roughgarden & Warut Suksompong

Authors
  1. Tomer Ezra
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Michal Feldman
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Tim Roughgarden
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Warut Suksompong
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Warut Suksompong .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Liverpool, Liverpool, UK

    George Christodoulou

  2. Universität Augsburg, Augsburg, Germany

    Tobias Harks

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2018 Springer Nature Switzerland AG

About this paper

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this paper

Ezra, T., Feldman, M., Roughgarden, T., Suksompong, W. (2018). Pricing Multi-unit Markets. In: Christodoulou, G., Harks, T. (eds) Web and Internet Economics. WINE 2018. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 11316. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-04612-5_10

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-04612-5_10

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-04611-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-04612-5

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation