Optimal Resource Procurement and the Price of Causality

In this article, we study the problem of procuring diverse resources in a forward market to cover set ${\bf E}$ uncertain demand signals e}$ . We consider two scenarios: 1) is revealed all at once by an oracle and 2) reveals itself causally. Each scenario induces optimal procurement cost. The ratio between these costs defined as price causality It captures additional cost not knowing future values signal. application contexts: Procuring energy reserves from capacity market, purchasing virtual machine instances cloud service. An upper bound on price causality obtained, exact computed for some special cases. algorithmic basis computations containment linear programming. A mechanism proposed allocate consumers who aggregate produce show that allocation fair, budget-balanced, respects causation principle. results are validated through numerical simulations.