Auction Design via Optimal Transportation

I will present an optimization framework based on optimal transport theory, characterizing the structure of revenue-optimal auctions in single-bidder multi-item settings. Our framework provides closed-form descriptions of multi-item auctions, generalizing Myerson’s celebrated single-item result, and exhibits simple settings with very rich structure in their optimal auction. Our result is obtained by establishing strong duality between optimal auctions and optimal transportation, enabled by an extension of the Monge-Kantorovich duality that accommodates convexity constraints in the dual of the optimal transportation problem. The talk is based on work with Alan Deckelbaum and Christos Tzamos, appearing here https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.3982/ECTA12618.

• Speaker: Constantinos Daskalakis (MIT)
• Monday 26 March 2018, 16:30–17:30
• Venue: CMS, MR13.
• Series: Geometric Analysis and Partial Differential Equations seminar; organiser: Prof. Clément Mouhot.