{"122291":{"#nid":"122291","#data":{"type":"event","title":"Jason Hartline, Northwestern University","body":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003ETitle: The Simple Economics of Approximately Optimal Auctions\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003EAbstract:\u003C\/strong\u003E Systems wherein strategic agents compete for limited resources are ubiquitous: the economy, computer networks, social networks, congestion networks, etc.\u0026nbsp; Auction theory governs the design and analysis of these systems.\u0026nbsp; I will describe a method for using approximation in auction theory to identify simple, practical, and robust auction mechanisms that perform nearly as well as the complex optimal ones.\u0026nbsp; A main goal of this approach is to understand the extent to which important intuition from optimal auctions for ideal models extends to approximately optimal auctions for more realistic models.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EAuction theory is well understood only in ideal models where agents have single-dimensional, linear preferences.\u0026nbsp; I.e., each agent has a value for receiving a service and her utility is the difference between her value and her payment.\u0026nbsp; For these models optimal auctions can be interpreted as \u0022marginal revenue\u0022 maximizers (Myerson, 1981; Bulow and Roberts 1989).\u0026nbsp; In more realistic models, i.e., where bidders have multi-dimensional preferences for different outcomes or non-linear utility, similar intuitive characterizations are unknown.\u0026nbsp; Understanding good auctions for these environments is considered to be the main challenge in auction theory.\u0026nbsp; In these more realistic environments maximizing marginal revenue may not be optimal, and furthermore, there is sometimes no direct way to implementing the marginal revenue maximization mechanism. I will present two results:\u0026nbsp; I will give procedures for implementing marginal revenue maximization in general, and I will show that marginal revenue maximization is approximately optimal.\u0026nbsp; The approximation factor smoothly degrades in a term that quantifies how far the environment is from an ideal one (i.e., where marginal revenue maximization is optimal).\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EJoint work with Saeed Alaei, Hu Fu, Nima Haghpanah, and Azarakhsh Malekian.\u003C\/p\u003E","summary":null,"format":"limited_html"}],"field_subtitle":"","field_summary":"","field_summary_sentence":[{"value":"The Simple Economics of Approximately Optimal Auctions"}],"uid":"27263","created_gmt":"2012-04-05 11:45:24","changed_gmt":"2016-10-08 01:58:41","author":"Elizabeth Ndongi","boilerplate_text":"","field_publication":"","field_article_url":"","field_event_time":{"event_time_start":"2012-04-23T18:00:00-04:00","event_time_end":"2012-04-23T18:00:00-04:00","event_time_end_last":"2012-04-23T18:00:00-04:00","gmt_time_start":"2012-04-23 22:00:00","gmt_time_end":"2012-04-23 22:00:00","gmt_time_end_last":"2012-04-23 22:00:00","rrule":null,"timezone":"America\/New_York"},"extras":[],"groups":[{"id":"50875","name":"School of Computer Science"},{"id":"70263","name":"ARC"}],"categories":[],"keywords":[],"core_research_areas":[],"news_room_topics":[],"event_categories":[{"id":"1795","name":"Seminar\/Lecture\/Colloquium"}],"invited_audience":[],"affiliations":[],"classification":[],"areas_of_expertise":[],"news_and_recent_appearances":[],"phone":[],"contact":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003E\u003Ca href=\u0022mailto:ndongi@cc.gatech.edu\u0022\u003Endongi@cc.gatech.edu\u003C\/a\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E","format":"limited_html"}],"email":[],"slides":[],"orientation":[],"userdata":""}}}