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Combinatorial Auctions and Binary Quadratic Valuations (Postscript)
In an earlier pair of posts I discussed a class of combinatorial auctions when agents have binary quadratic valuations. To formulate the problem of finding a welfare maximizing allocation let if object...
View ArticlePenn State’s Intellectual Property Auction
Penn state runs auctions to license its intellectual property. For each license on the block there is a brief description of what the relevant technology is and an opening bid which I interpret as a...
View ArticleDrought, Prices and Regulation
According to the NY Times, some Californians would have to cut their water consumption by 35 percent under the terms of a preliminary plan issued by state officials on Tuesday to meet a 25 percent...
View ArticleAuctions for Debate Slots
Fox News and CNN have been in knots recently about how to allocate scarce debate slots to the many Republican pretenders to the oval office. Should Poll numbers be the criteria? What about gender,...
View ArticleThe Sharing Economy
Because I have white hair and that so sparse as to resemble the Soviet harvest of 1963, I am asked for advice. Just recently I was asked about `hot’ research topics in the sharing economy. `You mean a...
View ArticleWhy Indirect Mechanisms?
When analyzing a mechanism it is convenient to assume that it is direct. The revelation principle allows one to argue that this restriction is without loss of generality. Yet, there are cases where one...
View ArticleA New Business Idea
Apparently, it is quite the rage to festoon one’s slides with company logos, particularly of the frightful five. At present this is done for free. It suggests a new business. A platform that matches...
View ArticleThe Incentive Auction for Radio Spectrum
Over a rabelaisian feast with convivial company, conversation turned to a twitter contretemps between economic theorists known to us at table. Its proximate cause was the design of the incentive...
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The Irrelevance of Automated Bidding
Around the mid 2010’s Google introduced automated bidding. Other platforms have followed suit. Rather than bidding directly for an `eyeball’, an advertiser delegates the bidding to the platform. In...
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Algorithmic Homogenization
At a recent Algorithmic Fairness meeting, there was some discussion of algorithmic homogenization. The concern, as expressed, for example in Kleinberg and Raghavan (2021) is that “the quality of...
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