We examine the buyer-seller problem under different levels of commitment. The seller is informed of the quality of the good, which affects both his cost and the buyer’s valuation, but the buyer is not. We characterize the allocations that can be achieved through mechanisms in which, unlike with full commitment, the buyer has the option to “walk away” after observing a given offer. We further ch...

Inspired by real-time ad exchanges for online display advertising, we consider the problem of inferring a buyer’s value distribution for a good when the buyer is repeatedly interacting with a seller through a posted-price mechanism. We model the buyer as a strategic agent, whose goal is to maximize her long-term surplus, and we are interested in mechanisms that maximize the seller’s long-term r...

We introduce a model in which firms trade goods via bilateral contracts which specify a buyer, a seller, and the terms of the exchange. This setting subsumes (manyto-many) matching with contracts, as well as supply chain matching. When firms’ relationships do not exhibit a supply chain structure, stable allocations need not exist. By contrast, in the presence of supply chain structure, a natura...

Intellectual Property (IP) core used in computing system-on-chip provides a unique blend of yielding enhanced design productivity with reduced design cycle time. However, leveraging benefits of IP core require protection against threats from both seller’s and buyer’s perspective. This paper proposes a novel symmetrical IP core protectionmethodology that embeds a buyer fingerprint and seller wat...

Economists have long recognized the importance of trust in trade and economic development, but few empirical studies address how trust is maintained and enhanced. We set up a rational expectation model that allows the marketplace to boost trust via buyer insurance or seller penalty. The model shows that buyer insurance will reduce seller trustworthiness in equilibrium because insurance increase...

We study valuing the data of a owner/seller for seeker/buyer. Data valuation is often carried out specific task assuming particular utility metric, such as test accuracy on validation set, that may not exist in practice. In this work, we focus task-agnostic without any requirements. The buyer has access to limited amount (which could be publicly available) and seeks more samples from seller. fo...

This paper considers a standard buyer-seller relation where the seller can take noncontractible actions that raise the value of the good to the buyer. This relationship can either take place inside a firm so that the buyer can give orders to the seller or across firm boundaries. Both the buyer and the seller can, if they wish, become altruistic towards one another. Becoming altruistic is costly...

We consider the problem of a single seller repeatedly selling a single item to a single buyer (specifically, the buyer has a value drawn fresh from known distribution D in every round). Prior work assumes that the buyer is fully rational and will perfectly reason about how their bids today affect the seller’s decisions tomorrow. In this work we initiate a different direction: the buyer simply r...

This paper finds an optimal mechanism for selling a good to a buyer who may be budget-constrained. We consider a seller with one unit of a good facing a buyer with a quasilinear utility function. If the buyer does not face a binding budget constraint, textbook monopoly pricing is optimal. By contrast, the possibility of a binding budget constraint can make it optimal for the seller to use nonli...

This paper develops a multi-attribute competition model for procurement of short life cycle products. In such an environment, the buyer installs dedicated production capacity at the suppliers before demand is realized. Final production orders are decided after demand materializes. Of course, the buyer is reluctant to bear all the capacity and inventory risk, and thus signs flexible contracts wi...