Improved Approximations for Posted Price and Second-price Mechanisms

We study the fundamental problem of selling a single indivisible good to one ofnbuyers with independentvaluations. We seek to design improved approximations to the optimal revenue achievable through two simpleand widely used mechanisms: second price auction with eager personalized reserve prices, and sequentialposted price mechanisms. Until recently, the best known approximation for both these mechanisms was 1−1e.We give improved approximations of 1−1e+0.022∼0.6543 for the sequential posted price mechanism and1−1e+0.029∼0.662 for the second price auction with eager reserve prices. We also make some progresstowards the problem of computing the optimal personalized eager reserve prices for a second price auction.

• Algorithms and Theory

• Economics and Electronic Commerce