Discrete Pricing in Multiobject Auctions with Unit Demand and Wealth Effects

• 成果类型: Article; Early Access
• 署名作者: Tierney, Ryan; Zhou, Yu
• 署名单位: University of Southern Denmark; Southern University of Science & Technology; Nagoya University
• 刊物名称: MANAGEMENT SCIENCE
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0025-1909
• DOI: 10.1287/mnsc.2024.06324
• 发表日期: 2026
• 关键词: heterogeneous-object auction; wealth effects; discrete pricing; tight equilibrium; performance bound

摘要

We study an auction model for selling multiple heterogeneous objects, in which (i) each agent gets at most one object and has utility functions that accommodate wealth effects, and (ii) prices are adjusted discretely via some prefixed increment. A Walrasian equilibrium may not exist in the discrete price setting. We instead propose a novel equilibrium concept, tight equilibrium, that is compatible with discrete prices. A descending-price auction, requiring only partial demand information and featuring a clear price discovery process, is constructed to yield a tight equilibrium. Tight equilibrium ensures efficiency and generalizes the well-known minimum price equilibrium in the continuous price setting to the discrete price setting. We estimate the deviation bound on prices between tight equilibrium and minimum price equilibrium, which depends on the magnitude of wealth effects, the increment size, and the number of objects. Based on this result, we introduce a notion of approximate incentive compatibility and show that our auction is both efficient and approximately incentive compatible.