Mechanism Design via Consensus Estimates, Cross Checking, and Profit Extraction

There is only one technique for prior-free optimal mechanism design that generalizes beyond the structurally benevolent setting of digital goods. This technique uses random sampling to estimate the distribution of agent values and then employs the Bayesian optimal mechanism for this estimated distribution on the remaining players. Though quite general, even for digital goods, this random sampling auction has a complicated analysis and is known to be suboptimal. To overcome these issues we generalize the consensus technique from Goldberg and Hartline (2003) to structurally rich environments that include, e.g., single-minded combinatorial auctions.Comment: 12 pages, 2 figure

On exponential stability of linear non-autonomous functional differential equations of neutral type

© 2016 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. General linear non-autonomous functional differential equations of neutral type are considered. A novel approach to exponential stability of neutral functional differential equations is presented. Consequently, explicit criteria are derived for exponential stability of linear non-autonomous functional differential equations of neutral type. A brief discussion to the obtained results and illustrative examples are given