Information Feedback in Iterative Combinatorial Auctions

Auctions have been getting increasing attention in computer science and economics, as they provide an efficient solution to resource allocation problems with self-interested agents. E-Commerce and finance have emerged as some of their largest application fields. The need for new auction mechanisms that allow complex bids such as bundle or multi-attribute bids has been raised in many situations. Beyond strategic problems, the design of these advanced auction formats exhibits hard computational problems. Pricing is one of the major challenges in designing iterative combinatorial auctions. The presence of bundle bids implies the existence of cases with no linear prices that support competitive equilibrium. This paper introduces a framework of pricing concepts and discusses recent implementations.