Competitive auctions and digital goods
SODA '01 Proceedings of the twelfth annual ACM-SIAM symposium on Discrete algorithms
Competitive generalized auctions
STOC '02 Proceedings of the thiry-fourth annual ACM symposium on Theory of computing
Sharing the cost of multicast transmissions
Journal of Computer and System Sciences - Special issue on Internet algorithms
An approximate truthful mechanism for combinatorial auctions with single parameter agents
SODA '03 Proceedings of the fourteenth annual ACM-SIAM symposium on Discrete algorithms
The Price of Truth: Frugality in Truthful Mechanisms
STACS '03 Proceedings of the 20th Annual Symposium on Theoretical Aspects of Computer Science
Pricing via Processing or Combatting Junk Mail
CRYPTO '92 Proceedings of the 12th Annual International Cryptology Conference on Advances in Cryptology
SODA '04 Proceedings of the fifteenth annual ACM-SIAM symposium on Discrete algorithms
Selfish Routing and the Price of Anarchy
Selfish Routing and the Price of Anarchy
Mechanism Design via Machine Learning
FOCS '05 Proceedings of the 46th Annual IEEE Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science
Beyond VCG: Frugality of Truthful Mechanisms
FOCS '05 Proceedings of the 46th Annual IEEE Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science
How much can taxes help selfish routing?
Journal of Computer and System Sciences - Special issue on network algorithms 2005
ACM Transactions on Algorithms (TALG)
Worst-case optimal redistribution of VCG payments
Proceedings of the 8th ACM conference on Electronic commerce
Algorithmic Game Theory
STOC '08 Proceedings of the fortieth annual ACM symposium on Theory of computing
On the competitive ratio of the random sampling auction
WINE'05 Proceedings of the First international conference on Internet and Network Economics
Efficiency and redistribution in dynamic mechanism design
Proceedings of the 9th ACM conference on Electronic commerce
Limited and online supply and the bayesian foundations of prior-free mechanism design
Proceedings of the 10th ACM conference on Electronic commerce
Simple versus optimal mechanisms
Proceedings of the 10th ACM conference on Electronic commerce
Sybilproof transitive trust protocols
Proceedings of the 10th ACM conference on Electronic commerce
GameNets'09 Proceedings of the First ICST international conference on Game Theory for Networks
On the Planner's Loss Due to Lack of Information in Bayesian Mechanism Design
SAGT '09 Proceedings of the 2nd International Symposium on Algorithmic Game Theory
Sequential Bidding in the Bailey-Cavallo Mechanism
WINE '09 Proceedings of the 5th International Workshop on Internet and Network Economics
Optimal-in-expectation redistribution mechanisms
Artificial Intelligence
Proceedings of the 11th ACM conference on Electronic commerce
Revenue maximization with a single sample
Proceedings of the 11th ACM conference on Electronic commerce
Double auction mechanisms for resource allocation in autonomous networks
IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications
On the competitive ratio of online sampling auctions
WINE'10 Proceedings of the 6th international conference on Internet and network economics
Proceedings of the 12th ACM conference on Electronic commerce
Proceedings of the 12th ACM conference on Electronic commerce
On optimal single-item auctions
Proceedings of the forty-third annual ACM symposium on Theory of computing
The 10th International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems - Volume 3
Optimal crowdsourcing contests
Proceedings of the twenty-third annual ACM-SIAM symposium on Discrete Algorithms
Bayesian incentive compatibility via fractional assignments
Proceedings of the twenty-second annual ACM-SIAM symposium on Discrete Algorithms
Prior-free auctions with ordered bidders
STOC '12 Proceedings of the forty-fourth annual ACM symposium on Theory of computing
Budget feasible mechanism design: from prior-free to bayesian
STOC '12 Proceedings of the forty-fourth annual ACM symposium on Theory of computing
Dynamic pricing with limited supply
Proceedings of the 13th ACM Conference on Electronic Commerce
Approximately optimal auctions for selling privacy when costs are correlated with data
Proceedings of the 13th ACM Conference on Electronic Commerce
Selling in Exclusive Markets: Some Observations on Prior-Free Mechanism Design
ACM Transactions on Economics and Computation - Special Issue on Algorithmic Game Theory
Mechanism Design via Consensus Estimates, Cross Checking, and Profit Extraction
ACM Transactions on Economics and Computation - Special Issue on Algorithmic Game Theory
On the Competitive Ratio of Online Sampling Auctions
ACM Transactions on Economics and Computation - Special Issue on Algorithmic Game Theory
Near-optimal multi-unit auctions with ordered bidders
Proceedings of the fourteenth ACM conference on Electronic commerce
Mechanism design for fair division: allocating divisible items without payments
Proceedings of the fourteenth ACM conference on Electronic commerce
Optimal provision-after-wait in healthcare
Proceedings of the 5th conference on Innovations in theoretical computer science
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Mechanism design is now a standard tool in computer science for aligning the incentives of self-interested agents with the objectives of a system designer. There is, however, a fundamental disconnect between the traditional application domains of mechanism design (such as auctions) and those arising in computer science (such as networks): while monetary "transfers" (i.e., payments) are essential for most of the known positive results in mechanism design, they are undesirable or even technologically infeasible in many computer systems. Classical impossibility results imply that the reach of mechanisms without transfers is severely limited. Computer systems typically do have the ability to reduce service quality--routing systems can drop or delay traffic, scheduling protocols can delay the release of jobs, and computational payment schemes can require computational payments from users (e.g., in spam-fighting systems). Service degradation is tantamount to requiring that users "burn money", and such "payments" can be used to influence the preferences of the agents at a cost of degrading the social surplus. We develop a framework for the design and analysis of "money-burning mechanisms" to maximize the residual surplus-the total value of the chosen outcome minus the payments required. Our primary contributions are the following. * We define a general template for prior-free optimal mechanism design that explicitly connects Bayesian optimal mechanism design, the dominant paradigm in economics, with worst-case analysis. In particular, we establish a general and principled way to identify appropriate performance benchmarks in prior-free mechanism design. * For general single-parameter agent settings, we characterize the Bayesian optimal money-burning mechanism. * For multi-unit auctions, we design a near-optimal prior-free money-burning mechanism: for every valuation profile, its expected residual surplus is within a constant factor of our benchmark, the residual surplus of the best Bayesian optimal mechanism for this profile. * For multi-unit auctions, we quantify the benefit of general transfers over money-burning: optimal money-burning mechanisms always obtain a logarithmic fraction of the full social surplus, and this bound is tight.