On Quadratic Core Projection Payment Rules for Combinatorial Auctions

Su, Yu

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/78999 Copy

Description

Title

On Quadratic Core Projection Payment Rules for Combinatorial Auctions

Author(s)

Su, Yu

Contributor(s)

Hajek, Bruce

Issue Date

2015-05

Keyword(s)

• quadratic core projection payment rules
• FCC auctions for electromagnetic spectrum licenses

Abstract

Auctions of licenses for electromagnetic spectrum conducted by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) often involve the simultaneous sale of hundreds of licenses for wireless bandwidth in different geographic regions and in different spectral bands. The auctions can involve hundreds of bid- ding rounds over several weeks. A nontrivial open problem is to design an auction format that allows bidder flexibility, maximizes social welfare, and withstands legal scrutiny. We consider a recently introduced promising auction format called core projection auctions. It is based on a projection of a Vickrey price vector onto the core. The auction consists of two processes: winner determination process and payment determination process. The auction aims to make it easy for bidders to determine their bids by giving them little strategic advantage by having their bids deviate from their true valuation of the spectrum. This thesis explores properties of such a core projection mechanism with an emphasis on numerically analyzing the marginal incentive for bidders to bid untruthfully. By implementing solvers and running simulations, we conjecture that in general, the payment for a winner increases no faster than the corresponding bidding price.

Type of Resource

text

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http://hdl.handle.net/2142/78999

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