(Almost) efficient mechanisms for bilateral trading

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Blumrosen, Liad; Dobzinski, Shahar
• 刊物名称: GAMES AND ECONOMIC BEHAVIOR
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0899-8256
• DOI: 10.1016/j.geb.2021.08.011
• 发表日期: 2021
• 页码: 369-383
• 关键词: bilateral trade; Double auctions; auctions; mechanism design; Two-sided markets; budget balance

摘要

We study the bilateral trade problem: one seller, one buyer and a single, indivisible item for sale. It is well known that there is no fully-efficient and incentive compatible mechanism for this problem that maintains a balanced budget. We design simple and robust mechanisms that obtain approximate efficiency with these properties. We show that even minimal use of statistical data can yield good approximation results. We then demonstrate how a mechanism for this simple bilateral-trade problem can be used as a black-box for constructing mechanisms in more general environments. Finally, we show that dominant-strategy incentive-compatible mechanisms cannot guarantee any constant -factor approximation to the optimal gains from trade. (c) 2021 Published by Elsevier Inc.