Winner determination for combinatorial auctions for tasks with time and precedence constraints

Abstract

We present a solution to the winner determination problem which takes into account not only costs but also risk aversion of the agent that accepts the bids, and which works for auctioning tasks that have time and precedence constraints. We use Expected Utility Theory as the basic mechanism for decision-making. Our theoretical and experimental analysis shows that Expected Utility is useful for choosing between cheap-but-risky and costly-but-safe bids. Moreover, we show how bids with similar costs and similar probabilities of being successfully completed but different time windows can be efficiently selected or rejected.