Abstract
Multiattribute auctions extend traditional auction settings to allow negotiation over nonprice attributes such as weight, color, and terms of delivery, in addition to price and promise to improve market efficiency in markets with configurable goods. This paper provides an iterative auction design for an important special case of the multiattribute allocation problem with special (preferential independent) additive structure on the buyer value and seller costs. Auction Additive&Discrete provides a refined design for a price-based auction in which the price feedback decomposes to an additive part with a price for each attribute and an aggregate part that appears as a price discount for each supplier. In addition, this design also has excellent information revelation properties that are validated through computational experiments. The auction terminates with an outcome of a modified Vickrey-Clarke-Groves mechanism. This paper also develops Auction NonLinear&Discrete for the more general nonlinear case—a particularly simple design that solves the general multiattribute allocation problem, but requires that the auctioneer maintains prices on bundles of attribute levels.
Highlights
Multiattribute auctions extend the traditional auction setting to allow negotiation over price and attributes
Multiattribute auctions can support the efficient procurement of configurable goods and services through the combined use of expressive bidding languages and competition across suppliers
Efficient markets are central to procurement activity where buyers and suppliers are engaged in long-term relationships
Summary
Multiattribute auctions extend the traditional auction setting to allow negotiation over price and attributes. In a procurement problem, a multiattribute auction can allow different suppliers to compete over both attributes values and price. Iterative auctions, which allow agents to revise their bids and provide incremental information about preferences, have several advantages over one-shot auctions for procurement problems. The primary contribution of this paper pertains to an auction design for an important special case of the multiattribute allocation problem (MAP) with special preferential independent (PI) additive structure on the buyer value and seller costs. There is private information on both sides of the auction in the MAP This complicates the auction design problem, because the winner-determination problem depends on the preferences of the buyer in addition to the revealed bids from sellers.
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
