Abstract:

In an important mechanism for sealed bid auctions developed by Vickrey and rewarded by a Nobel Prize, the highest bidder gets the item and pays the second highest bid value. Vickrey proved that for these auctions the best strategy for a participant is to bid his private true value for the item. Despite this advantage, second-price auctions are rarely used because they are subject to collusion of bidders. Employing novel cryptography we show that collusion can be avoided thus solving a long standing open problem. The talk will be generally accessible. Joint work with Silvio Micali.