In this paper we explore whether an auctioneer/buyer may benefit from introducing his transformability relationships (some goods can be transformed into others at a transformation cost) into multi-unit combinatorial reverse auctions. Thus, we quantitatively assess the potential savings the auctioneer/buyer may obtain with respect to combinatorial reverse auctions that do not consider tranformab...

Buyer coalition with a combination of items is a group of buyers joining together to purchase a combination of items with a larger discount. The primary aim of existing buyer coalition with a combination of items research is to generate a large total discount. However, the aim is hard to achieve because this research is based on the assumption that each buyer completely knows other buyers’ info...

The study of the buyer coalition has been reviewed by researchers for decades. However, there are few schemes applying ant colony optimization (ACO) for forming buyer coalition. In this paper, the approach called the Ant Colony for Buyer Coalition (ACBC) algorithm is proposed to form the buyer coalition with bundles of items. The main endeavor of the algorithm is to partition the whole group of...

In a multilateral bargaining problem with one buyer and two heterogeneous sellers owning perfectly complementary units, we find that there exists an equilibrium which leads to inefficient delays when the buyer negotiates with the higher-valuation seller first and where players are extremely impatient. We also find that the buyer prefers to negotiate with the lower-valuation seller first, except...

C with suppliers prone to default is an increasingly common problem in some industries, particularly automotive manufacturing. We model this phenomenon as a two-period contracting game with two identical suppliers, a single buyer, deterministic demand, and uncertain production costs. The suppliers are distressed at the start of the game and do not have access to external sources of capital; hen...

Inspired by real-time ad exchanges for online display advertising, we consider the problem of inferring a buyer’s value distribution for a good when the buyer is repeatedly interacting with a seller through a posted-price mechanism. We model the buyer as a strategic agent, whose goal is to maximize her long-term surplus, and we are interested in mechanisms that maximize the seller’s long-term r...