Takayuki Ito
ABSTRACT
Internet auctions are becoming an especially popular part of Electronic Commerce and auction protocols have been studied very widely in the field of multi-agent systems and AI. However, correctly judging the quality of auctioned goods is often difficult for non-experts (amateurs), in particular, on the Internet auctions. In this paper, we formalize such a situation so that Nature selects the quality of the auctioned good. Experts can observe Nature's selection (i.e., the quality of the good) correctly, while amateurs including the auctioneer cannot. In other words, the information on Nature's selection is asymmetric between experts and amateurs. In this situation, it is difficult to attain an efficient allocation, since experts have a clear advantage over amateurs and they would not reveal their valuable information without some reward. Thus, in this paper, we develop a new auction protocol in which truth-telling is a dominant strategy for each expert. This can be done by putting these experts in a situation similar to Prisoner's Dilemma. If they cooperate and tell lies, they can exclude amateurs, but betraying is a dominant strategy. By making experts to elicit their information on the quality of the good, the protocol can achieve a socially desirable, i.e., Pareto efficient allocation if certain assumptions are satisfied.
- {1} C. Boutilier, M. Goldszmidt, and B. Sabata. Sequential auctions for the allocation of resources with complementarities. In Proceedings of the sixteenth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, pages 524-534, 1999. Google Scholar
Digital Library
- {2} R. H. Guttman, A. G. Moukas, and P. Maes. Agent-mediated electronic commerce: A survey. The Knowledge Engineering Review, 13(2):147-159, 1998. Google ScholarDigital Library
- {3} L. Hunsberger and B. J. Grosz. A combinatorial auction for collaborative planning. In Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Multi-Agent Systems, pages 151-158, 2000. Google ScholarDigital Library
- {4} R. D. Luce and H. Raiffa. Games and Decisions. Dover Publications, 1989.Google Scholar
- {5} A. Mas-Colell, M. D. Whinston, and J. R. Green. Microeconomic Theory. Oxford University Press, 2nd edition, 1995.Google Scholar
- {6} S. Matsubara. Accelerating information revelation in ascending-bid auctions - avoiding last minute bidding -. In Proceedings of the Third ACM Conference on Electronic Commerce (EC2001), 2001. Google ScholarDigital Library
- {7} P. R. Milgrom and R. J. Weber. A theory of auctions and competitive bidding. Econometrica, 50(5):1089-1122, 1982.Google ScholarCross Ref
- {8} E. Rasmusen. Games and Information. Blackwell Publishers Ltd, 2nd edition, 1994.Google Scholar
- {9} T. Sandholm. emediator: A next generation electronic commerce server. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Autonomous Agents (AGENTS00), pages 341-438, 2000. Google ScholarDigital Library
- {10} P. R. Wurman, M. P. Wellman, and W. E. Walsh. The michigan internet auctionbot: A configurable auction server for human and software agents. In Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Autonomous Agents (AGENTS98), 1998. Google ScholarDigital Library
- {11} J. Yamamoto and K. Sycara. A stable and efficient buyer coalition formation scheme for e-marketplaces. In Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Autonomous Agents (AGENTS01), 2001. Google ScholarDigital Library
Index Terms
- Designing an auction protocol under asymmetric information on nature's selection
Recommendations
Towards a combinatorial auction protocol among experts and amateurs: the case of single-skilled experts
AAMAS '03: Proceedings of the second international joint conference on Autonomous agents and multiagent systemsAuctions have recently commanded a great deal of attention in the field of multi-agent systems. Correctly judging the quality of auctioned goods is often difficult for amateurs, in particular, on the Internet auctions. We have formalized such a ...
Binary Vickrey auction - A robust and efficient multi-unit sealed-bid online auction protocol against buyer multi-identity bidding
The multi-unit Vickrey-Clark-Groves (VCG) mechanism has two major weaknesses: it has high computational complexity and monotonicity problems [Paul Milgrom. Putting Auction Theory to Work. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, 2004] such that if ...
Robust combinatorial auction protocol against false-name bids.
This paper presents a new combinatorial auction protocol that is robust against false-name bids. Internet auctions have become an integral part of Electronic Commerce (EC) and a promising field for applying agent and Artificial Intelligence ...
Comments