{"type":"ScholarlyArticle","title":"Combinatorial Auctions via Machine Learning-based Preference Elicitation","authors":[{"name":"Gianluca Brero","slug":"gianluca-brero","given":"Gianluca","family":"Brero","affiliation":"Department of Informatics , University of Zurich"},{"name":"Benjamin Lubin","slug":"benjamin-lubin","given":"Benjamin","family":"Lubin","affiliation":"Information Systems Department , Boston University School of Management"},{"name":"Sven Seuken","slug":"sven-seuken","given":"Sven","family":"Seuken","affiliation":"Department of Informatics , University of Zurich"}],"abstract":"Combinatorial auctions (CAs) are used to allocate multiple items among bidders with complex valuations. Since the value space grows exponentially in the number of items, it is impossible for bidders to report their full value function even in medium-sized settings. Prior work has shown that current designs often fail to elicit the most relevant values of the bidders, thus leading to inefficiencies. We address this problem by introducing a machine learning-based elicitation algorithm to identify which values to query from the bidders. Based on this elicitation paradigm we design a new CA mechanism we call PVM, where payments are determined so that bidders’ incentives are aligned with allocative efficiency. We validate PVM experimentally in several spectrum auction domains, and we show that it achieves high allocative efficiency even when only few values are elicited from the bidders.","doi":"10.24963/ijcai.2018/18","url":"https://ijcai.org/proceedings/2018/18","pdf":"https://ijcai.org/proceedings/2018/0018.pdf","markdown":"https://ijcai.org/proceedings/2018/18.md","bibtex":"https://ijcai.org/proceedings/2018/bibtex/18","volume":{"slug":"2018","title":"Proceedings of the Twenty-Seventh International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence","short_title":"IJCAI 2018","url":"https://ijcai.org/proceedings/2018/","year":2018,"location":"Stockholm","dates":"13-19 July 2018","editors":"Jérôme Lang","isbn":"978-0-9992411-2-7","publisher":"International Joint Conferences on Artificial Intelligence Organization","doi_prefix":"10.24963/ijcai.2018"},"section":"Agent-based and Multi-agent Systems","track":"Main track","number":18,"pages":{"first":128,"last":136},"keywords":["Agent-based and Multi-agent Systems: Economic Paradigms, Auctions and Market-Based Systems","Agent-based and Multi-agent Systems: Noncooperative Games"],"videos":[],"references":[{"position":1,"raw":"[Ausubel and Baranov, 2017] Lawrence M Ausubel and Oleg Baranov. A practical guide to the combinatorial clock auction. The Economic Journal, 127(605), 2017.","title":"A practical guide to the combinatorial clock auction","authors":"M Lawrence, Oleg Ausubel, Baranov","year":"2017","venue":"The Economic Journal","doi":null,"url":null,"internal_url":null},{"position":2,"raw":"[Ausubel, 2006] Lawrence M Ausubel. An efficient dynamic auction for heterogeneous commodities. American Eco- nomic Review, 96(3):602-629, 2006.","title":"An efficient dynamic auction for heterogeneous commodities","authors":"M Lawrence, Ausubel","year":"2006","venue":"American Economic Review","doi":null,"url":null,"internal_url":null},{"position":3,"raw":"[Bichler et al., 2013] Martin Bichler, Pasha Shabalin, and Jürgen Wolf. Do core-selecting combinatorial clock auc- tions always lead to high efficiency? an experimental analysis of spectrum auction designs. Experimental Eco- nomics, 16(4):511-545, 2013.","title":"Do core-selecting combinatorial clock auctions always lead to high efficiency? an experimental analysis of spectrum auction designs","authors":"Martin Bichler, Pasha Shabalin, Jürgen Wolf","year":"2013","venue":"Experimental Economics","doi":null,"url":null,"internal_url":null},{"position":4,"raw":"[Blum et al., 2004] Avrim Blum, Jeffrey Jackson, Tuomas Sandholm, and Martin Zinkevich. Preference elicitation and query learning. Journal of Machine Learning Re- search, 5:649-667, 2004.","title":"Preference elicitation and query learning","authors":"Avrim Blum, Jeffrey Jackson, Tuomas Sandholm, Martin Zinkevich","year":"2004","venue":"Journal of Machine Learning Research","doi":null,"url":null,"internal_url":null},{"position":5,"raw":"[Brero and Lahaie, 2018] Gianluca Brero and Sébastien La- haie. A Bayesian clearing mechanism for combinatorial auctions. In Proceedings of the 32nd Conference on Arti- ficial Intelligence (AAAI), 2018.","title":"A Bayesian clearing mechanism for combinatorial auctions","authors":"Gianluca Brero, Sébastien Lahaie","year":"2018","venue":"Proceedings of the 32nd Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI)","doi":null,"url":null,"internal_url":null},{"position":6,"raw":"[Brero et al., 2017] Gianluca Brero, Benjamin Lubin, and Sven Seuken. Probably approximately efficient combina- torial auctions via machine learning. In Proceedings of the 31st Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), pages 397-405, 2017.","title":"Probably approximately efficient combinatorial auctions via machine learning","authors":"Gianluca Brero, Benjamin Lubin, Sven Seuken","year":"2017","venue":"Proceedings of the 31st Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI)","doi":null,"url":null,"internal_url":null},{"position":7,"raw":"[Clarke, 1971] Edward H Clarke. Multipart pricing of public goods. Public choice, 11(1):17-33, 1971.","title":"Multipart pricing of public goods","authors":"Clarke Edward","year":"1971","venue":"Public choice","doi":null,"url":null,"internal_url":null},{"position":8,"raw":"[Cramton, 2013] Peter Cramton. Spectrum Auction Design. Review of Industrial Organization, 42(2):161-190, 2013.","title":"Spectrum Auction Design","authors":"Peter Cramton","year":"2013","venue":"Review of Industrial Organization","doi":null,"url":null,"internal_url":null},{"position":9,"raw":"[Goeree and Holt, 2008] Jacob K Goeree and Charles A Holt. Hierarchical Package Bidding: A Paper & Pencil Combinatorial Auction. Games and Economic Behavior, 2008.","title":"Hierarchical Package Bidding: A Paper & Pencil Combinatorial Auction","authors":"Goeree, Holt ; Jacob, K Goeree, Charles A Holt","year":"2008","venue":"Games and Economic Behavior","doi":null,"url":null,"internal_url":null},{"position":10,"raw":"[Goetzendorf et al., 2015] A. Goetzendorf, M. Bichler, P. Shabalin, and R. W. Day. Compact Bid Languages and Core Pricing in Large Multi-item Auctions. Management Science, 61(7):1684-1703, 2015.","title":"Compact Bid Languages and Core Pricing in Large Multi-item Auctions","authors":"A Goetzendorf, M Bichler, P Shabalin, R W Day","year":"2015","venue":"Management Science","doi":null,"url":null,"internal_url":null},{"position":11,"raw":"[Groves, 1973] Theodore Groves. Incentives in teams. Econometrica: Journal of the Econometric Society, pages 617-631, 1973.","title":"Theodore Groves. Incentives in teams","authors":"Groves","year":"1973","venue":"Econometrica: Journal of the Econometric Society","doi":null,"url":null,"internal_url":null},{"position":12,"raw":"[Industry Canada, 2013] Industry Canada. Responses to clarification questions on the licensing framework for mo- bile broadband services (mbs) -700 mhz band. Technical report, Government of Canada, 2013.","title":"Industry Canada. Responses to clarification questions on the licensing framework for mobile broadband services (mbs) -700 mhz band","authors":null,"year":"2013","venue":null,"doi":null,"url":null,"internal_url":null},{"position":13,"raw":"[Lahaie and Lubin, 2017] Sébastien Lahaie and Benjamin Lubin. Adaptive-price combinatorial auctions. Working paper, 2017.","title":"Adaptive-price combinatorial auctions","authors":"Lubin Lahaie, Sébastien Lahaie, Benjamin Lubin","year":"2017","venue":null,"doi":null,"url":null,"internal_url":null},{"position":14,"raw":"[Lahaie and Parkes, 2004] Sébastien Lahaie and David C Parkes. Applying Learning Algorithms to Preference Elic- itation. In Proceedings of the 5th ACM Conference on Electronic Commerce, pages 180-188, 2004.","title":"Applying Learning Algorithms to Preference Elicitation","authors":"Sébastien Lahaie, David C Parkes","year":"2004","venue":"Proceedings of the 5th ACM Conference on Electronic Commerce","doi":null,"url":null,"internal_url":null},{"position":15,"raw":"[Lahaie, 2011] Sébastien Lahaie. A Kernel-Based Iterative Combinatorial Auction. In Proceedings of the 25th Con- ference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), 2011.","title":"A Kernel-Based Iterative Combinatorial Auction","authors":"Sébastien Lahaie","year":"2011","venue":"Proceedings of the 25th Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI)","doi":null,"url":null,"internal_url":null},{"position":16,"raw":"[Lubin et al., 2008] Benjamin Lubin, Adam Juda, Rug- giero Cavallo, Sebastien Lahai, Jeffrey Shneidman, and David C. Parkes. Ice: An expressive iterative combinato- rial exchange. Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research, 33:33-77, 2008.","title":"Ice: An expressive iterative combinatorial exchange","authors":"Benjamin Lubin, Adam Juda, Ruggiero Cavallo, Sebastien Lahai, Jeffrey Shneidman, David C Parkes","year":"2008","venue":"Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research","doi":null,"url":null,"internal_url":null},{"position":17,"raw":"[Nisan and Segal, 2006] Noam Nisan and Ilya Segal. The communication requirements of efficient allocations and supporting prices. Journal of Economic Theory, 129(1):192-224, 2006.","title":"Noam Nisan and Ilya Segal. The communication requirements of efficient allocations and supporting prices","authors":"Segal Nisan","year":"2006","venue":"Journal of Economic Theory","doi":null,"url":null,"internal_url":null},{"position":18,"raw":"[Parkes, 2006] David C. Parkes. Iterative combinatorial auc- tions. In Peter Cramton, Yoav Shoham, and Richard Stein- berg, editors, Combinatorial auctions, chapter 2. MIT Press, 2006.","title":"Iterative combinatorial auctions","authors":"C David, Parkes","year":"2006","venue":"Combinatorial auctions","doi":null,"url":null,"internal_url":null},{"position":19,"raw":"[Scheffel et al., 2012] Tobias Scheffel, Georg Ziegler, and Martin Bichler. On the Impact of Cognitive Limits in Combinatorial Auctions: An Experimental Study in the Context of Spectrum Auction Design. Experimental Eco- nomics, 15:667-692, 2012.","title":"On the Impact of Cognitive Limits in Combinatorial Auctions: An Experimental Study in the Context of Spectrum Auction Design","authors":"Scheffel","year":"2012","venue":"Experimental Economics","doi":null,"url":null,"internal_url":null},{"position":20,"raw":"[Smola and Schölkopf, 2004] Alex J Smola and Bernhard Schölkopf. A tutorial on support vector regression. Statis- tics and computing, 14(3):199-222, 2004.","title":"A tutorial on support vector regression","authors":"Alex J Smola, Bernhard Schölkopf","year":"2004","venue":"Statistics and computing","doi":null,"url":null,"internal_url":null},{"position":21,"raw":"[Vickrey, 1961] William Vickrey. Counterspeculation, auc- tions, and competitive sealed tenders. The Journal of fi- nance, 16(1):8-37, 1961.","title":"Counterspeculation, auctions, and competitive sealed tenders","authors":"William Vickrey","year":"1961","venue":"The Journal of finance","doi":null,"url":null,"internal_url":null},{"position":22,"raw":"[Weiss et al., 2017] Michael Weiss, Benjamin Lubin, and Sven Seuken. SATS: A Universal Spectrum Auction Test Suite. In Proceedings of the 16th Conference on Au- tonomous Agents and MultiAgent Systems, pages 51-59, 2017.","title":"SATS: A Universal Spectrum Auction Test Suite","authors":"Michael Weiss, Benjamin Lubin, Sven Seuken","year":"2017","venue":"Proceedings of the 16th Conference on Autonomous Agents and MultiAgent Systems","doi":null,"url":null,"internal_url":null}],"license_note":"Copyright International Joint Conferences on Artificial Intelligence."}