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Simultaneous Independent Online Auctions with Discrete Bid Increments

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Abstract

Decentralized multi-item auctions offer great opportunities for integrating fragmented online auction markets into larger markets with more efficient outcomes. This paper extends the theory of multi-item ascending auctions of substitutes by considering any finite positive bid increment and allowing the bidders to bid asyn-chronously instead of bidding in a round-robin fashion. We consider a setup where the bidders’ utilities over multiple items are additive and bound the maximum inefficiency in the allocation when the bidders follow a simple greedy strategy. We also obtain the limits within which the prices of individual items can vary from one outcome to another. For the special case of single unit bidder demand, we also bound the maximum surplus which a bidder can extract by unilaterally switching to some other strategy. The paper suggests an upper bound for the minimum required bid increment which would be necessary for competitive price discovery and truthful bidding in a practical online implementation.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Adobe Systems, I-1A, Sector 25A, Noida, U.P., India, 201301

    Vipul Bansal

  2. IBM India Research Lab., IIT Campus, Hauz Khas, New Delhi, India, 110016

    Rahul Garg

Authors
  1. Vipul Bansal
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  2. Rahul Garg
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Correspondence to Vipul Bansal.

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The work was done while the author was with IBM Research.

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Bansal, V., Garg, R. Simultaneous Independent Online Auctions with Discrete Bid Increments. Electron Commerce Res 5, 181–201 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10660-005-6156-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10660-005-6156-1

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