1 research outputs found
Truthful Multi-Parameter Auctions with Online Supply: an Impossible Combination
We study a basic auction design problem with online supply. There are two
unit-demand bidders and two types of items. The first item type will arrive
first for sure, and the second item type may or may not arrive. The auctioneer
has to decide the allocation of an item immediately after each item arrives,
but is allowed to compute payments after knowing how many items arrived. For
this problem we show that there is no deterministic truthful and individually
rational mechanism that, even with unbounded computational resources, gets any
finite approximation factor to the optimal social welfare