Randomized algorithms
Truth revelation in approximately efficient combinatorial auctions
Journal of the ACM (JACM)
Truthful Mechanisms for One-Parameter Agents
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Approximation techniques for utilitarian mechanism design
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Optimal combinatoric auctions with single-minded bidders
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Optimal marketing strategies over social networks
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Optimal mechanism design and money burning
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Limited and online supply and the bayesian foundations of prior-free mechanism design
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Simple versus optimal mechanisms
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Proceedings of the 10th ACM conference on Electronic commerce
Robust mechanisms for risk-averse sellers
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On the competitive ratio of online sampling auctions
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On optimal single-item auctions
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Crowdsourced Bayesian auctions
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Mechanism design via consensus estimates, cross checking, and profit extraction
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Mechanism design via correlation gap
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Simple, optimal and efficient auctions
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Prior-independent multi-parameter mechanism design
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Prior-free auctions with ordered bidders
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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
Proceedings of the 13th ACM Conference on Electronic Commerce
Lower bounds on revenue of approximately optimal auctions
WINE'12 Proceedings of the 8th international conference on Internet and Network Economics
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
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On the Competitive Ratio of Online Sampling Auctions
ACM Transactions on Economics and Computation - Special Issue on Algorithmic Game Theory
Prior-independent auctions for risk-averse agents
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Near-optimal multi-unit auctions with ordered bidders
Proceedings of the fourteenth ACM conference on Electronic commerce
On the ratio of revenue to welfare in single-parameter mechanism design
Proceedings of the fourteenth ACM conference on Electronic commerce
Optimal and near-optimal mechanism design with interdependent values
Proceedings of the fourteenth ACM conference on Electronic commerce
Prior-independent mechanisms for scheduling
Proceedings of the forty-fifth annual ACM symposium on Theory of computing
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We design and analyze approximately revenue-maximizing auctions in general single-parameter settings. Bidders have publicly observable attributes, and we assume that the valuations of indistinguishable bidders are independent draws from a common distribution. Crucially, we assume all valuation distributions are a priori unknown to the seller. Despite this handicap, we show how to obtain approximately optimal expected revenue - nearly as large as what could be obtained if the distributions were known in advance - under quite general conditions. Our most general result concerns arbitrary downward-closed single-parameter environments and valuation distributions that satisfy a standard hazard rate condition. We also assume that no bidder has a unique attribute value, which is obviously necessary with unknown and attribute-dependent valuation distributions. Here, we give an auction that, for every such environment and unknown valuation distributions, has expected revenue at least a constant fraction of the expected optimal welfare (and hence revenue). A key idea in our auction is to associate each bidder with another that has the same attribute, with the second bidder's valuation acting as a random reserve price for the first. Conceptually, our analysis shows that even a single sample from a distribution - the second bidder's valuation - is sufficient information to obtain near-optimal expected revenue, even in quite general settings.