Sets in Excess Demand in Ascending Auctions with Unit-Demand Bidders

CentER Discussion Paper No. 2010-51

17 Pages Posted: 25 May 2010

See all articles by Tommy Andersson

Tommy Andersson

Lund University - Department of Economics

Christer Andersson

Lund University

Dolf Talman

Tilburg University - Department of Econometrics & Operations Research

Date Written: May 17, 2010

Abstract

This paper analyzes the problem of selling a number of indivisible items to a set of unit-demand bidders. An ascending auction mechanism called the Excess Demand Ascending Auction (EDAA) is defined. The main results demonstrate that EDAA terminates in a finite number of iterations and that the exact auction mechanism in Demange, Gale and Sotomayor (J. Polit. Economy 94: 863-872, 1986) and its modification based on the Ford-Fulkerson method, proposed by Sankaran (Math. Soc. Sci. 28: 143-150, 1994), reduce to special cases of EDAA.

Keywords: Multi-Item Auction, Unit-Demand Bidders, Excess Demand, Algorithms

JEL Classification: C62, D44, D50

Suggested Citation

Andersson, Tommy and Andersson, Christer and Talman, Dolf J. J., Sets in Excess Demand in Ascending Auctions with Unit-Demand Bidders (May 17, 2010). CentER Discussion Paper No. 2010-51, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1615489 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1615489

Tommy Andersson (Contact Author)

Lund University - Department of Economics ( email )

P.O. Box 7082
S-220 07 Lund
Sweden

Christer Andersson

Lund University ( email )

Box 117
Lund, SC Skane S221 00
Sweden

Dolf J. J. Talman

Tilburg University - Department of Econometrics & Operations Research ( email )

Tilburg, 5000 LE
Netherlands
+31 13 466 2346 (Phone)

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