Auctions with online supply

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Babaioff, Moshe; Blumrosen, Liad; Roth, Aaron
• 署名单位: Hebrew University of Jerusalem; University of Pennsylvania
• 刊物名称: GAMES AND ECONOMIC BEHAVIOR
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0899-8256
• DOI: 10.1016/j.geb.2015.01.004
• 发表日期: 2015
• 页码: 227-246
• 关键词: Dynamic auctions; Unknown supply; Online auctions; approximation; dynamic mechanism design; Stochastic supply

摘要

Online advertising auctions present settings in which there is uncertainty about the number of items for sale. We study mechanisms for selling identical items when the total supply is unknown but is drawn from a known distribution. Items arrive dynamically, and the seller must make immediate allocation and payment decisions with the goal of maximizing social welfare. We devise a simple incentive-compatible mechanism that guarantees some constant fraction of the first-best solution. A surprising feature of our mechanism is that it artificially limits supply, and we show that limiting the supply is essential for obtaining high social welfare. Although common when maximizing revenue, commitment to limit the supply is less intuitive when maximizing social welfare. The performance guarantee of our mechanism is in expectation over the supply distribution; We show that obtaining similar performance guarantee for every realization of supply is impossible. (C) 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.