We study revenue optimization in a repeated auction between a single seller and a single buyer. Traditionally, the design of repeated auctions requires strong modeling assumptions about the bidder behavior, such as it being myopic, infinite lookahead, or some specific form of learning behavior. Is it possible to design mechanisms which are simultaneously optimal against a multitude of possible ...

We analyze the security of a fingerprinting scheme proposed at IWDW 2005. We show two results, namely that this scheme (1) does not provide seller security : a dishonest buyer can repudiate the fact that he redistributed a content, and (2) does not provide buyer security : a buyer can be framed by a malicious seller.

Previous research in the area of buyer strategies for choosing sellers in ecommerce markets has focused on frequent purchases. In this paper we present a reputation based buyer strategy for choosing sellers in a decentralized, open, uncertain, dynamic, and untrusted B2C ecommerce market for frequent and infrequent purchases. The buyer models the reputation of the seller after having purchased g...

B of long lead times associated with product development and building capacity, a supplier must initiate investment in capacity when the product development effort is ongoing. Because the product is ill defined at this point in time, the buyer is unable to commit to the future terms of trade through a courtenforceable contract. Instead, to provide incentives for capacity investment, the buyer i...

To get the items that a buyer wants in an Internet auction, he must search for the items through several auction sites. When the bidding starts, the buyer needs to connect to these auction sites frequently so that he can monitor the bid states and re-bid. A reserve-price auction reduces the number of connections, but this limits the user’s bidding strategy. Another problem is equity between the...

Digital watermarks have previously been proposed for the purposes of copy protection and copy deterrence for multimedia content. In copy deterrence, a content owner (seller) inserts a unique watermark into a copy of the content before it is sold to a buyer. If the buyer sells unauthorized copies of the watermarked content, then these copies can be traced to the unlawful reseller (original buyer...

A change order is frequently initiated by either the supplier or the buyer, especially when the contract is long-term or when the contractual design is complex. In response to a change order, the buyer can enter a bargaining process to negotiate a new price. If the bargaining fails, she pays a cancellation fee (or penalty) and opens an auction. We call this process the sequential bargaining-auc...

This paper analyzes a bilateral trade model where the buyer can choose any cumulative distribution function (CDF) supported on [0, 1], which then determines her valuation. The seller, after observing the buyer’s choice of the CDF but not its realization, gives a takeit-or-leave-it offer to the buyer. We characterize the unique equilibrium outcome of this game and show that in this outcome, the ...

As the safety and efficacy of IUDs are being appreciated by more clinicians and by more women, the demand for these devices has grown. Unfortunately, the prices of these devices have also increased over the last few years. The cost of the IUD, when amortized over the average time of utilization, is very low, but that does little to buffer women from the initial sticker shock. In times of econom...

In Part III of this paper, we apply the price dynamical model with big buyers and big sellers developed in Part I of this paper to the daily closing data of the top 20 stocks in Hang Seng Index in Hong Kong Stock Exchange. The basic idea is to estimate the strength parameters of the big buyers and the big sellers in the model and make buy/sell decisions based on these parameter estimates. We de...