loading...
Mechanism Design via Machine Learning
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA October 23-October 25
DOI Bookmark: http://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/SFCS.2005.5046th Annual IEEE Symposium on Foundat ...
 This Article 
 
PDF
HTML
 
 Share 
   
 Bibliographic References 
   
 Add to: 
 
Digg
Furl
Spurl
Blink
Simpy
Google
Del.icio.us
Y!MyWeb
 
 Search 
   
Maria-Florina Balcan, Carnegie Mellon University
Avrim Blum, Carnegie Mellon University

We use techniques from sample-complexity in machine learning to reduce problems of incentive-compatible mechanism design to standard algorithmic questions, for a wide variety of revenue-maximizing pricing problems. Our reductions imply that for these problems, given an optimal (or \beta-approximation) algorithm for the standard algorithmic problem, we can convert it into a (1+ \in)-approximation (or \beta(1+ \in)-approximation) for the incentive-compatiblemechanism design problem, so long as the number of bidders is sufficiently large as a function of an appropriate measure of complexity of the comparison class of solutions. We apply these results to the problem of auctioning a digital good, the attribute auction problem, and to the problem of itempricing in unlimited-supply combinatorial auctions. From a learning perspective, these settings present several challenges: in particular, the loss function is discontinuous and asymmetric, and the range of bidders? valuations may be large.

Citation:
Maria-Florina Balcan, Avrim Blum, "Mechanism Design via Machine Learning," focs, pp.605-614, 46th Annual IEEE Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science (FOCS'05), 2005
Usage of this product signifies your acceptance of the Terms of Use.