Efficient empirical revenue maximization in single-parameter auction environments?

Yannai A. Gonczarowski, Noam Nisan

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

Abstract

We present a polynomial-time algorithm that, given samples from the unknown valuation distribution of each bidder, learns an auction that approximately maximizes the auctioneer's revenue in a variety of single-parameter auction environments including matroid environments, position environments, and the public project environment. The valuation distributions may be arbitrary bounded distributions (in particular, they may be irregular, and may differ for the various bidders), thus resolving a problem left open by previous papers. The analysis uses basic tools, is performed in its entirety in value-space, and simplifies the analysis of previously known results for special cases. Furthermore, the analysis extends to certain single-parameter auction environments where precise revenue maximization is known to be intractable, such as knapsack environments.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationSTOC 2017 - Proceedings of the 49th Annual ACM SIGACT Symposium on Theory of Computing
EditorsPierre McKenzie, Valerie King, Hamed Hatami
Pages856-868
Number of pages13
ISBN (Electronic)9781450345286
DOIs
StatePublished - 19 Jun 2017
Event49th Annual ACM SIGACT Symposium on Theory of Computing, STOC 2017 - Montreal, Canada
Duration: 19 Jun 201723 Jun 2017

Publication series

NameProceedings of the Annual ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing
VolumePart F128415

Conference

Conference49th Annual ACM SIGACT Symposium on Theory of Computing, STOC 2017
Country/TerritoryCanada
CityMontreal
Period19/06/1723/06/17

Keywords

  • Approximate revenue maximization
  • PAC learning

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Software

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