Mechanism Design via Consensus Estimates, Cross Checking, and Profit\n Extraction

2011/08/23 by Bach Q. Ha, Ha, Bach Q., Jason D. Hartline +1
Decision Sciences · Economics, Econometrics and Finance · #Auction Theory and Applications #Computer Science and Game Theory (cs.GT) #Economic theories and models #FOS: Computer and information sciences #Game Theory and Applications

paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1108.4744

openalex publication_date 2011/08/23 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28

Abstract

There is only one technique for prior-free optimal mechanism design that\ngeneralizes beyond the structurally benevolent setting of digital goods. This\ntechnique uses random sampling to estimate the distribution of agent values and\nthen employs the Bayesian optimal mechanism for this estimated distribution on\nthe remaining players. Though quite general, even for digital goods, this\nrandom sampling auction has a complicated analysis and is known to be\nsuboptimal. To overcome these issues we generalize the consensus technique from\nGoldberg and Hartline (2003) to structurally rich environments that include,≠.g., single-minded combinatorial auctions.\n

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