Greedy Mechanism Design for Truthful Combinatorial Auctions
نویسندگان
چکیده
We study the combinatorial auction problem, in which a set of objects are to be distributed amongst selfish bidders with the goal of maximizing social welfare. We consider mechanisms that apply greedy algorithms, and ask to what extent truthful greedy mechanisms can find approximate solutions to the combinatorial auction problem. We associate the notion of greediness with a broad class of algorithms known as priority algorithms. We show that no truthful priority mechanism obtains a sub-linear approximation ratio. We also consider a particular type of priority algorithm for use with submodular bidders, and show that no such algorithm can be made truthful.
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