The design of revenue-maximizing combinatorial auctions, i.e. multi-item auctions over bundles of goods, is one of the most fundamental problems in computational economics, unsolved even for two bidders and two items for sale. In the traditional economic models, it is assumed that the bidders’ valuations are drawn from an underlying distribution and that the auction designer has perfect knowled...

16.1 Introduction Hikers encountering a fallen tree blocking a trail can climb over it, cut a path through it, or walk around it. In general, obstacles can be overcome, reduced, or avoided. Often, reducing the obstacle or avoiding it is a preferable choice. The computational problems in combinatorial auctions are no different. The previous four chapters have been largely devoted to describing w...

We consider the problem of rational, self-interested, economic agents who must negotiate with each other in order to carry out their plans. Customer agents express their plans in the form of task networks with temporal and precedence constraints. The market runs a combinatorial reverse auction, in which supplier agents submit bids specifying prices for combinations of tasks, along with time win...

In this paper we propose a mechanism for the allocation of pipeline capacities, assuming that participants bidding capacities do have subjective evaluation various network routes. The proposed is based on concept route–quantity pairs. Each participant defines limited number routes and places multiple bids, corresponding to quantities, each these assigns convex combination submitted bids partici...

In recent times combinatorial auctions have become an interesting domain for theoretical and applied developments of the electronic market technology. A combinatorial auction allows the simultaneous selling of several items and each participant to the auction may bid for bundles of items. When items in a bid are all different the auction is said a Single Unit Combinatorial Auction (SUCA), while...

The need for new procurement auction mechanisms that allow for rich bid types such as bundle bids on multiple items has been raised in many situations in industrial procurement. In addition to strategic problems, the design of these combinatorial auctions exhibits hard computational problems. For example, the winner determination typically leads to NP-hard allocation problems in combinatorial a...