The shifting bottleneck procedure for job shop scheduling
Management Science
A futures market in computer time
Communications of the ACM
Algorithm for optimal winner determination in combinatorial auctions
Artificial Intelligence
The WALRAS Algorithm: A Convergent Distributed Implementation of General Equilibrium Outcomes
Computational Economics
A method for solving distributed service allocation problems
Web Intelligence and Agent Systems
Combinatorial Auctions
Mechanism design for multi-agent meeting scheduling
Web Intelligence and Agent Systems
Multi-Period Combinatorial Auction Mechanism for Distributed Resource Allocation and Scheduling
IAT '07 Proceedings of the 2007 IEEE/WIC/ACM International Conference on Intelligent Agent Technology
WI-IAT '08 Proceedings of the 2008 IEEE/WIC/ACM International Conference on Web Intelligence and Intelligent Agent Technology - Volume 02
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In this paper, we evaluate whether the robustness of a market mechanism that allocates complementary resources could be improved through the aggregation of time periods in which resources are consumed. In particular, we study a multi-round combinatorial auction that is built on a general equilibrium framework. We adopt the general equilibrium framework and the particular combinatorial auction design from the literature, and we investigate the benefits and the limitation of time-period aggregation when demand-side uncertainties are introduced. By using simulation experiments on a real-life resource allocation problem from a container port, we show that, under stochastic conditions, the performance variation of the process decreases as the time frame length time frames are obtained by aggregating time periods increases. This is achieved without causing substantial deterioration in the mean performance.The main driver for the increase in robustness is that longer time frames result in allocations where resources are assigned in longer contiguous time blocks. The resulting resource continuity allows bidders to shift schedules upon realization of stochasticity. To demonstrate the generality of the notion that resource continuity increases allocation robustness, we perform further experiments on a decentralized variant of the classical job shop scheduling problem. The experiment results demonstrate similar benefits.