978 - monotonicity for two independent items

Project Year: 2022
REU Student (s): Jachym Mierva | Charles University (Prague, Czech Republic) | David Sychrovsky | Charles University (Prague, Czech Republic)
Student 1 Institution: Charles University (Prague, Czech Republic)
Student 2 Institution: Charles University (Prague, Czech Republic)
Project Mentor: Ariel Schvartzman
Project Mentor Area: DIMACS
Project Abstract: Sale of independent items is an often studied problem. Myerson's lemma provides an efficient way to realize an optimal trade of a single item. However, in a multi-item setting, the results can be non-intuitive. It has been shown before that in some cases, buyers having a higher valuation for sold items can lead to lower revenue of the seller. This non-monotonicity is not yet understood. In this paper, we provide conditions which guarantee monotonicity and an algorithm to generate non-monotone examples. We show that such examples are rare, even though the revenue can change significantly in some cases.

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