Revenue Non-monotonicity in Matching Markets

2026/02/24 by Jason Hartline · 1 voice
Economics, Econometrics and Finance · Computer Science · #econ.TH #cs.GT

paper · pdf

Abstract

The Vickrey-Clarke-Groves (VCG) mechanism is infamously revenue non-monotone in combinatorial auctions. I.e., when a buyer increases their value for a bundle of items, the total auction revenue may decrease. Combinatorial auctions exhibit complementarities which broadly result in complexities in auction theory. This brief note shows that non-monotonicity in multi-item auctions is not a result of complementarities, and in fact, VCG is revenue non-monotone even in matching markets.

Discussions

• I decided to write these examples up formally. You can find them on arxiv (arxiv.org/abs/2602.20439) as: "Revenue Non-monotonicity in Matching Markets" Happy to make updates if there are important ref [bsky, 4 points, 1 comments]

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