ICES: Small: Auction Games

实践中使用的许多拍卖极其简单，但不符合通常的机制设计标准。这些拍卖被称为“拍卖游戏”。互联网提供了一个运行数百万次拍卖的环境，在这个环境中，简单比以往任何时候都更重要。机制设计的“理想”是单品维克里拍卖（第二价拍卖），以第二高价将单品卖给出价最高的竞标者。本次拍卖具有简单与高效相结合的特点：拍卖规则简单直观；它具有简单的投标策略，如实报告代理人的价值，因为出价是优势策略；这导致了有效的分配。机制设计的一个主要主题是在单一物品拍卖之外的环境中设计这种真实有效的拍卖。不幸的是，真实性和效率往往是有代价的：由此产生的机制对于许多环境来说可能过于复杂。这个项目的目标是开发工具来理解拍卖游戏的结果，比如Ad-Auctions（互联网服务提供商和广告商玩的一款价值数十亿美元的游戏），并量化预期效率和收益。首席研究员将在游戏信息结构的各种模型下，以及在对代理的合理性的各种假设下，研究这一目标。该提案的更广泛影响在于开发了理解许多自然拍卖（例如通常在实践中使用的拍卖）所需的基本工具。这样的理解将导致在不同环境下进行简单直观的拍卖，从而产生高质量的结果。

Many auctions used in practice are extremely simple, but do not satisfy the usual standards of mechanism design. These auctions are referred to as "auction games. " The Internet provides an environment running millions of auctions, an environment where simplicity is more important than ever before. The "ideal" of mechanism design is the single item Vickrey auction (second price auction), selling a single item to the highest bidder at the second highest price. This auction has all the desired features combining simplicity with efficiency: the auction has simple and intuitive rules; it has simple bidding strategies, as truthfully reporting the agent's value as the bid is dominant strategy; and it leads to efficient allocation. A main theme in mechanism design has been designing such truthful and efficient auctions in settings other than the single item auction. Unfortunately, truthfulness and efficiency often come at a price: the resulting mechanisms can be too complex for many environments. The goal of this project is to develop tools to understand outcomes of auction games, such as Ad-Auctions (a multi-billion-dollar game played by Internet service providers and advertisers), and to quantify the expected efficiency and revenue. The Principal Investigator will investigate this goal under various models of the information structure of the game, as well as under various assumptions on the rationality of the agents. The broader impact of the proposal is in developing the basic tools needed to understand many natural auctions, such as the auctions typically being used in practice. Such understanding will lead to simple and intuitive auctions in different environments that result in good quality outcomes.