Market Clearability

Market mechanisms play a central role in AI as a coordination tool in multiagent systems and as an application area for algorithm design. Mechanisms where buyers are directly cleared with sellers, and thus do not require an external liquidity provider, are highly desirable for electronic marketplaces for several reasons. In this paper we study the inherent complexity of, and design algorithms for, clearing auctions and reverse auctions with multiple indistinguishable units for sale. We consider settings where bidders express their preferences via price-quantity curves, and settings where the bids are price-quantity pairs. We show that markets with piecewise linear supply/demand curves and non-discriminatory pricing can always be cleared in polynomial time. Surprisingly, if discriminatory pricing is used to clear the market, the problem becomes

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2001
• Where: IJCAI
• Authors: Tuomas Sandholm, Subhash Suri
• Keywords: Discriminatory Pricing, IJCAI 2001, IJCAI 2007, Price-quantity Curves, Price-quantity Pairs