A Comparative Study of Multi-Attribute Continuous Double Auction Mechanisms

Auctions have been as a competitive method of buying and selling valuable or rare items for a long time. Single-sided auctions in which participants negotiate on a single attribute (e.g. price) are very popular. Double auctions and negotiation on multiple attributes create more advantages compared to single-sided and single-attribute auctions. Nonetheless, this adds the complexity of the auction. Any auction mechanism needs to be budget balanced, Pareto optimal, individually rational, and coalition-proof. Satisfying all these properties is not so much trivial so that no multi-attribute double auction mechanism could address all these limitations. This research analyzes and compares the GM, timestamp-based and social-welfare maximization mechanisms for multi-attribute double auctions. The analysis of the simulation results shows that the algorithm proposed by Gimple and Makio satisfies more properties compared to other methods for such an auction mechanism. This multi-attribute double auction mechanism is based on game theory and behaves fairer in matching and arbitration.