Multi-unit Auctions with Budget Limits

We study multi-unit auctions where the bidders have a budget constraint, a situation very common in practice that has received relatively little attention in the auction theory literature. Our main result is an impossibility: there are no incentive-compatible auctions that always produce a Pareto-optimal allocation. We also obtain some surprising positive results for certain special cases. JEL Classification Numbers: C70, D44, D82

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2008
• Where: FOCS
• Authors: Shahar Dobzinski, Ron Lavi, Noam Nisan
• Keywords: Auction Theory Literature, FOCS 2008, JEL Classification Numbers, Multi-unit Auctions, Theoretical Computer Science