Selling two goods optimally

Giannakopoulos Y, Koutsoupias E (2015)


Publication Type: Conference contribution, Original article

Publication year: 2015

Journal

Publisher: Springer Verlag

Book Volume: 9135

Pages Range: 650-662

Conference Proceedings Title: Proceedings of the 42nd International Colloquium on Automata, Languages, and Programming (ICALP)

Event location: Kyoto JP

ISBN: 9783662476659

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-662-47666-6_52

Open Access Link: https://arxiv.org/abs/1510.03399

Abstract

We provide sufficient conditions for revenue maximization in a two-good monopoly where the buyer’s valuations for the items come from independent (but not necessarily identical) distributions over bounded intervals. Under certain distributional assumptions, we give exact, closed-form formulas for the prices and allocation rules of the optimal selling mechanism. As a side result we give the first example of an optimal mechanism in an i.i.d. setting over a support of the form [0, b] which is not deterministic. Since our framework is based on duality techniques, we were also able to demonstrate how slightly relaxed versions of it can still be used to design mechanisms that have very good approximation ratios with respect to the optimal revenue, through a “convexification” process.

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How to cite

APA:

Giannakopoulos, Y., & Koutsoupias, E. (2015). Selling two goods optimally. In Naoki Kobayashi, Bettina Speckmann, Kazuo Iwama, Magnus M. Halldorsson (Eds.), Proceedings of the 42nd International Colloquium on Automata, Languages, and Programming (ICALP) (pp. 650-662). Kyoto, JP: Springer Verlag.

MLA:

Giannakopoulos, Yiannis, and Elias Koutsoupias. "Selling two goods optimally." Proceedings of the 42nd International Colloquium on Automata, Languages and Programming, ICALP 2015, Kyoto Ed. Naoki Kobayashi, Bettina Speckmann, Kazuo Iwama, Magnus M. Halldorsson, Springer Verlag, 2015. 650-662.

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