5 research outputs found
Draft Auctions
We introduce draft auctions, which is a sequential auction format where at
each iteration players bid for the right to buy items at a fixed price. We show
that draft auctions offer an exponential improvement in social welfare at
equilibrium over sequential item auctions where predetermined items are
auctioned at each time step. Specifically, we show that for any subadditive
valuation the social welfare at equilibrium is an -approximation
to the optimal social welfare, where is the number of items. We also
provide tighter approximation results for several subclasses. Our welfare
guarantees hold for Bayes-Nash equilibria and for no-regret learning outcomes,
via the smooth-mechanism framework. Of independent interest, our techniques
show that in a combinatorial auction setting, efficiency guarantees of a
mechanism via smoothness for a very restricted class of cardinality valuations,
extend with a small degradation, to subadditive valuations, the largest
complement-free class of valuations. Variants of draft auctions have been used
in practice and have been experimentally shown to outperform other auctions.
Our results provide a theoretical justification
Predictive Analytics for Real-time Auction Bidding Support: a Case on Fantasy Football
This work reports about an end-to-end business analytics experiment, applying predictive and prescriptive analytics to real-time bidding support for fantasy football draft auctions. Forecast methods are used to quantify the expected return of each investment alternative, while subgradient optimization is used to provide adaptive online recommendations on the allocation of scarce budget resources. A distributed front-end implementation of the prescriptive modules and the rankings of simulated leagues testify the viability of this architecture for actual support
UNCITRAL Considers Electronic Reverse Auctions, as Comparative Public Procurement Comes of Age in the U.S.
This article reports on the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL) review of electronic reverse auctions in procurement systems around the world. The article describes the U.S. experience, including the stalled regulatory initiative regarding reverse auctions. Drawing on the literature and on UNCITRAL studies from procurement systems in Asia, Europe and Latin America, the article cites lessons from other nations\u27 use of reverse auctions. In particular, the article discusses the European Union\u27s new rule on reverse auctions, which is probably the best example, worldwide, of a careful attempt to regulate reverse auctions. The article discusses traditional questions in reverse auctions - when is it appropriate to use reverse auctions - and also addresses the more difficult question of when it is probably inappropriate to use reverse auctions. Given these recurring problems, and the pitfalls inherent in reverse auctions, the authors argue that, on balance, reverse auctions should be regulated, and should not be left to proliferate without guidance and structure. Finally, they suggest that the reverse auctions debate itself marks a watershed in U.S. procurement policy: perhaps for the first time, thanks to advances in communications and comparative study, U.S. policymakers will be able to draw directly on other nations\u27 successes and failures in addressing a complex and difficult issue of procurement policy
Fuelling the zero-emissions road freight of the future: routing of mobile fuellers
The future of zero-emissions road freight is closely tied to the sufficient availability of new and clean fuel options such as electricity and Hydrogen. In goods distribution using Electric Commercial Vehicles (ECVs) and Hydrogen Fuel Cell Vehicles (HFCVs) a major challenge in the transition period would pertain to their limited autonomy and scarce and unevenly distributed refuelling stations. One viable solution to facilitate and speed up the adoption of ECVs/HFCVs by logistics, however, is to get the fuel to the point where it is needed (instead of diverting the route of delivery vehicles to refuelling stations) using "Mobile Fuellers (MFs)". These are mobile battery swapping/recharging vans or mobile Hydrogen fuellers that can travel to a running ECV/HFCV to provide the fuel they require to complete their delivery routes at a rendezvous time and space. In this presentation, new vehicle routing models will be presented for a third party company that provides MF services. In the proposed problem variant, the MF provider company receives routing plans of multiple customer companies and has to design routes for a fleet of capacitated MFs that have to synchronise their routes with the running vehicles to deliver the required amount of fuel on-the-fly. This presentation will discuss and compare several mathematical models based on different business models and collaborative logistics scenarios