Abstract
This paper presents an algorithm for decision-making where the buyer needs to procure one of possibly many bundles of complementary products, and items are sold individually in multiple open ascending-price (English) auctions. Auctions have fixed start and end times, and some may run concurrently. Expected utility of a bidding choice is computed by considering expected utility of choices at future decisions. The problem is modeled as a Markov decision process, and dynamic programming is used to determine the value of bidding/not bidding in each state. Three techniques for reducing the state space are given. Results show that a bidding agent using this algorithm achieves significantly higher utility on average when compared with one that does not consider the value of future choices.
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© 2004 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
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Buffett, S., Grant, A. (2004). A Decision-Theoretic Algorithm for Bundle Purchasing in Multiple Open Ascending-Price Auctions. In: Tawfik, A.Y., Goodwin, S.D. (eds) Advances in Artificial Intelligence. Canadian AI 2004. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 3060. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-24840-8_32
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-24840-8_32
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-540-22004-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-540-24840-8
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