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48
Making Decisions Based on the Preferences of Multiple Agents
"... People often have to reach a joint decision even though they have conflicting preferences over the alternatives. Examples range from the mundane—such as allocating chores among the members of a household—to the sublime—such as electing a government and thereby charting the course for a country. The ..."
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Cited by 28 (8 self)
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People often have to reach a joint decision even though they have conflicting preferences over the alternatives. Examples range from the mundane—such as allocating chores among the members of a household—to the sublime—such as electing a government and thereby charting the course for a country. The joint decision can be reached by an informal negotiating process or by a carefully specified protocol. Philosophers, mathematicians, political scientists, economists, and others have studied the merits of various protocols for centuries. More recently, especially over the course of the past decade or so, computer scientists have also become deeply involved in this study. The perhaps surprising arrival of computer scientists on this scene is due to a variety of reasons, including the following. 1. Computer networks provide a new platform for communicating
Detecting and forecasting economic regimes in multi-cast . . .
- DECISION SUPPORT SYSTEMS
, 2009
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Bidding for representative allocations for display advertising
- In Fifth Workshop on Internet and Netowork Economics
, 2009
"... Display advertising has traditionally been sold via guaranteed contracts – a guaranteed contract is a deal between a publisher and an advertiser to allocate a certain number of impressions over a certain period, for a pre-specified price per impression. However, as spot markets for display ads, such ..."
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Cited by 22 (4 self)
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Display advertising has traditionally been sold via guaranteed contracts – a guaranteed contract is a deal between a publisher and an advertiser to allocate a certain number of impressions over a certain period, for a pre-specified price per impression. However, as spot markets for display ads, such as the RightMedia Exchange, have grown in prominence, the selection of advertisements to show on a given page is increasingly being chosen based on price, using an auction. As the number of participants in the exchange grows, the price of an impressions becomes a signal of its value. This correlation between price and value means that a seller implementing the contract through bidding should offer the contract buyer a range of prices, and not just the cheapest impressions necessary to fulfill its demand. Implementing a contract using a range of prices, is akin to creating a mutual fund of advertising impressions, and requires randomized bidding. We characterize what allocations can be implemented with randomized bidding, namely those where the desired share obtained at each price is a non-increasing function of price. In addition, we provide a full characterization of when a set of campaigns are compatible and how to implement them with randomized bidding strategies. 1
Expressive Banner Ad Auctions and Model-Based Online Optimization for Clearing
"... We present the design of a banner advertising auction which is considerably more expressive than current designs. We describe a general model of expressive ad contracts/bidding and an allocation model that can be executed in real time through the assignment of fractions of relevant ad channels to sp ..."
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Cited by 21 (8 self)
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We present the design of a banner advertising auction which is considerably more expressive than current designs. We describe a general model of expressive ad contracts/bidding and an allocation model that can be executed in real time through the assignment of fractions of relevant ad channels to specific advertiser contracts. The uncertainty in channel supply and demand is addressed by the formulation of a stochastic combinatorial optimization problem for channel allocation that is rerun periodically. We solve this in two different ways: fast deterministic optimization with respect to expectations; and a novel online sample-based stochastic optimization method— that can be applied to continuous decision spaces—which exploits the deterministic optimization as a black box. Experiments demonstrate the importance of expressive bidding and the value of stochastic optimization. 1
A Theory of Expressiveness in Mechanisms
, 2007
"... A key trend in the world—especially in electronic commerce—is a demand for higher levels of expressiveness in the mechanisms that mediate interactions, such as the allocation of resources, matching of peers, and elicitation of opinions from large and diverse communities. Intuitively, one would think ..."
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Cited by 17 (8 self)
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A key trend in the world—especially in electronic commerce—is a demand for higher levels of expressiveness in the mechanisms that mediate interactions, such as the allocation of resources, matching of peers, and elicitation of opinions from large and diverse communities. Intuitively, one would think that this increase in expressiveness would lead to more efficient mechanisms (e.g., due to better matching of supply and demand). However, until now we have lacked a general way of characterizing the expressiveness of these mechanisms, analyzing how it impacts the actions taken by rational agents—and ultimately the outcome of the mechanism. In this technical report we introduce a general model of expressiveness for mechanisms. Our model is based on a new measure which we refer to as the maximum impact dimension. The measure captures the number of different ways that an agent can impact the outcome of a mechanism. We proceed to uncover a fundamental connection between this measure and the concept of shattering from computational learning theory. We also provide a way to determine an upper bound on the expected efficiency of any mechanism under its most efficient Nash equilibrium which, remarkably, depends only on the mechanism’s expressiveness. We show that for any setting and any prior over agent preferences, the
On the Computational Power of Demand Queries
"... We study the computational power of iterative combinatorial auctions. Most existing iterative combinatorial auctions are based on repeatedly suggesting prices for bundles of items, and querying the bidders for their “demand” under these prices. We prove several results regarding such auctions that u ..."
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Cited by 17 (3 self)
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We study the computational power of iterative combinatorial auctions. Most existing iterative combinatorial auctions are based on repeatedly suggesting prices for bundles of items, and querying the bidders for their “demand” under these prices. We prove several results regarding such auctions that use a polynomial number of demand queries: (1) that such auctions can simulate several other natural types of queries; (2) that they can approximate the optimal allocation as well as generally possible using polynomial communication or computation, while weaker types of queries cannot do so; (3) that such auctions that only use item prices may solve allocation problems in communication cost that is exponentially lower than the cost incurred by auctions that use prices for bundles. For the latter result, we initiate the study of how prices of bundles can be represented when they are not linear, and show that the “default” representation has severe limitations. Our results hold for any series of demand queries with polynomial length, without any additional restrictions on the queries (e.g., to ascending prices).
Trust-based mechanisms for robust and efficient task allocation in the presence of execution uncertainty
- Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research
, 2009
"... Vickrey-Clarke-Groves (VCG) mechanisms are often used to allocate tasks to selfish and rational agents. VCG mechanisms are incentive compatible, direct mechanisms that are efficient (i.e., maximise social utility) and individually rational (i.e., agents prefer to join rather than opt out). However, ..."
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Cited by 14 (6 self)
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Vickrey-Clarke-Groves (VCG) mechanisms are often used to allocate tasks to selfish and rational agents. VCG mechanisms are incentive compatible, direct mechanisms that are efficient (i.e., maximise social utility) and individually rational (i.e., agents prefer to join rather than opt out). However, an important assumption of these mechanisms is that the agents will always successfully complete their allocated tasks. Clearly, this assumption is unrealistic in many real-world applications, where agents can, and often do, fail in their endeavours. Moreover, whether an agent is deemed to have failed may be perceived differently by different agents. Such subjective perceptions about an agent’s probability of succeeding at a given task are often captured and reasoned about using the notion of trust. Given this background, in this paper we investigate the design of novel mechanisms that take into account the trust between agents when allocating tasks. Specifically, we develop a new class of mechanisms, called trust-based mechanisms, that can take into account multiple subjective measures of the probability of an agent succeeding at a given task and produce allocations that maximise social utility, whilst ensuring that no agent obtains a negative utility. We then show that such mechanisms pose a challenging new combinatorial
The Impact of Expressiveness on the Effectiveness of Privacy Mechanisms for Location Sharing
, 2008
"... Information and Communication Technologies Institute. The authors would also like to thank Lucian Cesca, ..."
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Cited by 10 (4 self)
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Information and Communication Technologies Institute. The authors would also like to thank Lucian Cesca,
Hidden markets: UI design for a P2P backup application
- Proc. CHI ’10
"... The Internet has allowed market-based systems to become increasingly pervasive. In this paper we explore the role of user interface (UI) design for these markets. Different UIs induce different mental models which in turn determine how users understand and interact with a market. Thus, the intersect ..."
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Cited by 10 (5 self)
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The Internet has allowed market-based systems to become increasingly pervasive. In this paper we explore the role of user interface (UI) design for these markets. Different UIs induce different mental models which in turn determine how users understand and interact with a market. Thus, the intersection of UI design and economics is a novel and important research area. We make three contributions at this intersection. First, we present a novel design paradigm which we call hidden markets. The primary goal of hidden markets is to hide as much of the market complexities as possible. Second, we explore this new design paradigm using one particular example: a P2P backup application. We explain the market underlying this system and provide a detailed description of the new UI we developed. Third, we present results from a formative usability study. Our findings indicate that a number of users could benefit from a market-based P2P backup system. Most users intuitively understood the give & take principle as well as the bundle constraints of the market. However, the pricing aspect was difficult to discover/understand for many users and thus needs further investigation. Overall, the results are encouraging and show promise for the hidden market paradigm.
An Options-Based Solution to the Sequential Auction Problem
- ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
, 2009
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