2012/09/28 by Paul Duetting, Monika Henzinger, Duetting, Paul +3
Business, Management and Accounting · Computer Science · Decision Sciences · Economics, Econometrics and Finance · #Auction Theory and Applications #Computer Science and Game Theory (cs.GT) #Consumer Market Behavior and Pricing #FOS: Computer and information sciences #Game Theory and Voting Systems #cs.GT
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1209.6448
arxiv created 2012/09/28 · openalex publication_date 2012/09/28 · arxiv updated 2012/10/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We study individual rational, Pareto optimal, and incentive compatible mechanisms for auctions with heterogeneous items and budget limits. For multi-dimensional valuations we show that there can be no deterministic mechanism with these properties for divisible items. We use this to show that there can also be no randomized mechanism that achieves this for either divisible or indivisible items. For single-dimensional valuations we show that there can be no deterministic mechanism with these properties for indivisible items, but that there is a randomized mechanism that achieves this for either divisible or indivisible items. The impossibility results hold for public budgets, while the mechanism allows private budgets, which is in both cases the harder variant to show. While all positive results are polynomial-time algorithms, all negative results hold independent of complexity considerations.