More expressive market models and the future of combinatorial auctions

ABSTRACT

Research on auctions and other engineered markets is undergoing a renaissance, spurred by the growth of computing power and communication networks, and the new opportunities for social and economic interaction that they enable. Previous research has been applied to good effect, perhaps most famously by search engines to allocate advertising space in keyword auctions. Other case studies of combinatorial auctions being used in practice can be found in the book of Cramton et al. [Cramton et al. 2006]. Despite these success stories, there is much more to do. In this letter, I will give my opinion as to the ultimate determinants of how successful research on engineered markets can be, with implications for where the community can focus attention to maximize its impact. I will use [Golovin 2007] to illustrate initial progress in the direction I have in mind.

REFERENCES

• 1: Peter Cramton , Yoav Shoham , Richard Steinberg, Combinatorial Auctions, The MIT Press, 2006
• 2: Daniel Golovin, Stochastic packing-market planning, Proceedings of the 8th ACM conference on Electronic commerce, June 11-15, 2007, San Diego, California, USA [doi>10.1145/1250910.1250936]

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  H. Information Systems
  H.4 INFORMATION SYSTEMS APPLICATIONS
      H.4.2 Types of Systems
          Subjects: Decision support (e.g., MIS)

Additional Classification:
  G. Mathematics of Computing
  G.3 PROBABILITY AND STATISTICS
      Subjects: Probabilistic algorithms (including Monte Carlo)

  H. Information Systems
  H.3 INFORMATION STORAGE AND RETRIEVAL
      H.3.5 On-line Information Services
          Subjects: Commercial services

  I. Computing Methodologies
  I.2 ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
      I.2.8 Problem Solving, Control Methods, and Search
  I.6 SIMULATION AND MODELING
      I.6.5 Model Development
          Subjects: Modeling methodologies

General Terms:
Algorithms, Design

Keywords:
combinatorial auctions, engineered markets, mechanism design