Iterative Combinatorial Auctions with Linear Prices: Results of Numerical Experiments

Abstract

Iterative combinatorial auctions (ICA) have been getting increasing attention in computer science and economics, as they provide an efficient solution to resource allocation problems with superadditive and subadditive valuations. Several auction designs have been proposed in the literature using different types of bidding languages and different types of ask prices. A few auction designs have focused on simple linear prices. Although, it can be shown that exact linear prices are often impossible to calculate, ICAs based on linear prices have performed very well in the laboratory with respect to allocative efficiency. In this paper we focus on three promising auction designs, the combinatorial clock auction, the resource allocation design (RAD) and a modified version of RAD and analyze their performance in discrete event simulations