A "core-selecting auction mechanism" is a direct mechanism for a multi-item allocation problem that selects a core allocation with respect to the bidders' reported values and the auctioneer's exogenously given preferences. For every profile of others' reports, a bidder has a best reply that is a...

Motivated by markets for television advertising time-slots, we introduce a new combinatorial auction format, including a general method for approximating core-selecting payments for hard problems. Given the size and complexity of ad markets in practice, an enumerative XOR bidding language...

Much of the prominent literature describing behavior in eBay-like marketplaces emphasizes the successful use of “sniping” agents that wait until the last moments of an auction to bid (truthfully) on behalf of a human user. These agents fare well against “naïve” agents (typically assumed...