Speaker:

Yuan Fang (University of Electronic Science and Technology of China)

Time:

• 16:20-17:20 (Time in Beijing)
• October 14, 2022 (Friday)

Venue:

518, Research Building 4

Abstract:

Diffusion auction is a business model where a seller aims to incentivise buyers in a social network to diffuse the auction information thereby attracting potential buyers. In this study, we focus on designing mechanisms for multi-unit diffusion auctions. Despite several attempts at this problem, existing mechanisms are unsatisfactory in one way or another. In particular, incentive compatibility seems to be hard to guarantee when a global diffusion tree structure is used to guide allocation. In this paper, we propose MUDA-1 and MUDA-m for single-demand and multi-demand cases of this problem, respectively. Our mechanism are the first multi-unit diffusion auction that is incentive compatible, individual rational, non-deficit and IDM-competitive. This closes the gap left open by the previous work. We also empirically analyse the effects of different graph exploration schemes to the auction outcomes.