IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/arx/papers/2208.09326.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Optimal Referral Auction Design

Author

Listed:
  • Rangeet Bhattacharyya
  • Parvik Dave
  • Palash Dey
  • Swaprava Nath

Abstract

The auction of a single indivisible item is one of the most celebrated problems in mechanism design with transfers. Despite its simplicity, it provides arguably the cleanest and most insightful results in the literature. When the information that the auction is running is available to every participant, Myerson [20] provided a seminal result to characterize the incentive-compatible auctions along with revenue optimality. However, such a result does not hold in an auction on a network, where the information of the auction is spread via the agents, and they need incentives to forward the information. In recent times, a few auctions (e.g., [13, 18]) were designed that appropriately incentivized the intermediate nodes on the network to promulgate the information to potentially more valuable bidders. In this paper, we provide a Myerson-like characterization of incentive-compatible auctions on a network and show that the currently known auctions fall within this class of randomized auctions. We then consider a special class called the referral auctions that are inspired by the multi-level marketing mechanisms [1, 6, 7] and obtain the structure of a revenue optimal referral auction for i.i.d. bidders. Through experiments, we show that even for non-i.i.d. bidders there exist auctions following this characterization that can provide a higher revenue than the currently known auctions on networks.

Suggested Citation

  • Rangeet Bhattacharyya & Parvik Dave & Palash Dey & Swaprava Nath, 2022. "Optimal Referral Auction Design," Papers 2208.09326, arXiv.org, revised Jul 2023.
    • Handle: RePEc:arx:papers:2208.09326
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://arxiv.org/pdf/2208.09326
    File Function: Latest version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Hart, Sergiu & Nisan, Noam, 2017. "Approximate revenue maximization with multiple items," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 172(C), pages 313-347.
    2. Bin Li & Dong Hao & Dengji Zhao & Tao Zhou, 2018. "Customer Sharing in Economic Networks with Costs," Papers 1807.06822, arXiv.org.
    3. William Vickrey, 1961. "Counterspeculation, Auctions, And Competitive Sealed Tenders," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 16(1), pages 8-37, March.
    4. Manelli, Alejandro M. & Vincent, Daniel R., 2007. "Multidimensional mechanism design: Revenue maximization and the multiple-good monopoly," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 137(1), pages 153-185, November.
    5. Bin Li & Dong Hao & Dengji Zhao, 2020. "Incentive-Compatible Diffusion Auctions," Papers 2001.06975, arXiv.org, revised Apr 2020.
    6. Roger B. Myerson, 1981. "Optimal Auction Design," Mathematics of Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 6(1), pages 58-73, February.
    7. Edward Clarke, 1971. "Multipart pricing of public goods," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 11(1), pages 17-33, September.
    8. Groves, Theodore, 1973. "Incentives in Teams," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 41(4), pages 617-631, July.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Yuhang Guo & Dong Hao & Bin Li, 2022. "Combinatorial Procurement Auction in Social Networks," Papers 2208.14591, arXiv.org.
    2. Tim Roughgarden & Inbal Talgam-Cohen & Qiqi Yan, 2019. "Robust Auctions for Revenue via Enhanced Competition," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 68(4), pages 1074-1094, July.
    3. Bin Li & Dong Hao & Dengji Zhao, 2020. "Incentive-Compatible Diffusion Auctions," Papers 2001.06975, arXiv.org, revised Apr 2020.
    4. Tim Roughgarden & Inbal Talgam-Cohen, 2018. "Approximately Optimal Mechanism Design," Papers 1812.11896, arXiv.org, revised Aug 2020.
    5. Azar, Pablo D. & Kleinberg, Robert & Weinberg, S. Matthew, 2019. "Prior independent mechanisms via prophet inequalities with limited information," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 118(C), pages 511-532.
    6. Jing Chen & Silvio Micali, 2016. "Leveraging Possibilistic Beliefs in Unrestricted Combinatorial Auctions," Games, MDPI, vol. 7(4), pages 1-19, October.
    7. Dengji Zhao, 2021. "Mechanism Design Powered by Social Interactions," Papers 2102.10347, arXiv.org.
    8. Loertscher, Simon & Mezzetti, Claudio, 2021. "A dominant strategy, double clock auction with estimation-based tatonnement," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 16(3), July.
    9. Song, Yangwei, 2018. "Efficient Implementation with Interdependent Valuations and Maxmin Agents," Rationality and Competition Discussion Paper Series 92, CRC TRR 190 Rationality and Competition.
    10. Marek Pycia & Peter Troyan, 2021. "A theory of simplicity in games and mechanism design," ECON - Working Papers 393, Department of Economics - University of Zurich.
    11. Kazumura, Tomoya & Mishra, Debasis & Serizawa, Shigehiro, 2020. "Mechanism design without quasilinearity," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 15(2), May.
    12. Philippe Jehiel & Laurent Lamy, 2018. "A Mechanism Design Approach to the Tiebout Hypothesis," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 126(2), pages 735-760.
    13. Corchón, Luis C., 2008. "The theory of implementation : what did we learn?," UC3M Working papers. Economics we081207, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid. Departamento de Economía.
    14. Debasis Mishra & Abdul Quadir, 2012. "Deterministic single object auctions with private values," Discussion Papers 12-06, Indian Statistical Institute, Delhi.
    15. Jehiel, Philippe & Meyer-ter-Vehn, Moritz & Moldovanu, Benny, 2007. "Mixed bundling auctions," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 134(1), pages 494-512, May.
    16. Bierbrauer, Felix & Netzer, Nick, 2016. "Mechanism design and intentions," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 163(C), pages 557-603.
    17. Tomoya Kazumura & Shigehiro Serizawa, 2016. "Efficiency and strategy-proofness in object assignment problems with multi-demand preferences," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 47(3), pages 633-663, October.
    18. Claude d'Aspremont & Jacques Crémer & Louis-André Gérard-Varet, 2003. "Correlation, independence, and Bayesian incentives," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 21(2), pages 281-310, October.
    19. Matthias Lang, 2020. "Mechanism Design with Narratives," CESifo Working Paper Series 8502, CESifo.
    20. Michael Ostrovsky & Michael Schwarz, 2023. "Reserve Prices in Internet Advertising Auctions: A Field Experiment," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 131(12), pages 3352-3376.

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:arx:papers:2208.09326. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: arXiv administrators (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://arxiv.org/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.