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Bilateral Trade: A Regret Minimization Perspective

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  • Nicol`o Cesa-Bianchi
  • Tommaso Cesari
  • Roberto Colomboni
  • Federico Fusco
  • Stefano Leonardi

Abstract

Bilateral trade, a fundamental topic in economics, models the problem of intermediating between two strategic agents, a seller and a buyer, willing to trade a good for which they hold private valuations. In this paper, we cast the bilateral trade problem in a regret minimization framework over $T$ rounds of seller/buyer interactions, with no prior knowledge on their private valuations. Our main contribution is a complete characterization of the regret regimes for fixed-price mechanisms with different feedback models and private valuations, using as a benchmark the best fixed-price in hindsight. More precisely, we prove the following tight bounds on the regret: - $\Theta(\sqrt{T})$ for full-feedback (i.e., direct revelation mechanisms). - $\Theta(T^{2/3})$ for realistic feedback (i.e., posted-price mechanisms) and independent seller/buyer valuations with bounded densities. - $\Theta(T)$ for realistic feedback and seller/buyer valuations with bounded densities. - $\Theta(T)$ for realistic feedback and independent seller/buyer valuations. - $\Theta(T)$ for the adversarial setting.

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  • Nicol`o Cesa-Bianchi & Tommaso Cesari & Roberto Colomboni & Federico Fusco & Stefano Leonardi, 2021. "Bilateral Trade: A Regret Minimization Perspective," Papers 2109.12974, arXiv.org.
    • Handle: RePEc:arx:papers:2109.12974
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    References listed on IDEAS

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