Market Design and the Evolution of the Combinatorial Clock Auction

Ausubel, Lawrence M.; Baranov, O. V.

doi:10.1017/9781316471609.010

Cited by 21 publications

(19 citation statements)

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“…Various authorities around the world have used combinatorial clock-proxy auctions to sell radio-frequency spectrum, e.g. the Australian Communications and Media Authority's 700 MHz and 2.5 GHz spectrum auctions [14].…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

An Iterative On-Line Auction Mechanism for Aggregated Demand-Side Participation

Chapman

Verbič

2017

IEEE Trans. Smart Grid

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Abstract-This paper considers a demand-side aggregation scheme specifically for large numbers of small loads, such as households and small and medium-sized businesses. We introduce a novel auction format, called a staggered clock-proxy auction (SCPA), for on-line scheduling of these loads. This is a two phase format, consisting of: a sequence of overlapping iterative ascending price clock auctions, one for each time-slot over a finite decision horizon, and; a set of proxy auctions that begin at the termination of each individual clock auction, and which determine the final price and allocation for each time-slot. The overlapping design of the clock phases grant bidders the ability to effectively bid on inter-temporal bundles of electricity use, thereby focusing on the most-relevant parts of the pricequantity space. Since electricity is a divisible good, the proxy auction uses demand-schedule bids, which the aggregator uses to compute a uniform-price partial competitive equilibrium for each time slot. We show that, under mild assumptions on the bidders' utilities functions, the proxy phase implements the VickreyClarke-Groves outcome, which makes straightforward bidding in the proxy phase a Bayes-Nash equilibrium. Furthermore, we demonstrate the SCPA in a scenario comprised of household agents with three different utility function types, and show how the mechanism enables efficient on-line energy use scheduling.

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Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

An Iterative On-Line Auction Mechanism for Aggregated Demand-Side Participation

Chapman

Verbič

2017

IEEE Trans. Smart Grid

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“…If not the bid for package T is forbidden. Moreover, in its general form [26,1], the revealed preference rules ensure that the only bidding strategies that are admissible correspond to virtual valuation functions. Indeed, even relaxed implementations of the constraints allow only for approximate virtual valuation functions; see Boodaghians and Vetta [11].…”

Section: Bidding Activity Rulesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For example, ascending auctions induce information transfers that allow prices to more accurately reflect valuations. 1 A consequence is more economically efficient allocations and, potentially, higher revenues. The SMRA has been very successful in practice but it also has drawbacks [16].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

On the Economic Efficiency of the Combinatorial Clock Auction

Bousquet

Cai

Hunkenschröder

et al. 2015

Proceedings of the Twenty-Seventh Annual ACM-SIAM Symposium on Discrete Algorithms

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Since the 1990s spectrum auctions have been implemented world-wide. This has provided for a practical examination of an assortment of auction mechanisms and, amongst these, two simultaneous ascending price auctions have proved to be extremely successful. These are the simultaneous multiround ascending auction (SMRA) and the combinatorial clock auction (CCA). It has long been known that, for certain classes of valuation functions, the SMRA provides good theoretical guarantees on social welfare. However, no such guarantees were known for the CCA.In this paper, we show that CCA does provide strong guarantees on social welfare provided the price increment and stopping rule are well-chosen. This is very surprising in that the choice of price increment has been used primarily to adjust auction duration and the stopping rule has attracted little attention. The main result is a polylogarithmic approximation guarantee for social welfare when the maximum number of items demanded C by a bidder is fixed. Specifically, we show that either the revenue of the CCA is at least an Ω 1 C 2 log n log 2 m -fraction of the optimal welfare or the welfare of the CCA is at least an Ω 1 log n -fraction of the optimal welfare, where n is the number of bidders and m is the number of items. As a corollary, the welfare ratio -the worst case ratio between the social welfare of the optimum allocation and the social welfare of the CCA allocation -is at most O(C 2 · log n · log 2 m). We emphasize that this latter result requires no assumption on bidders valuation functions. Finally, we prove that such a dependence on C is necessary. In particular, we show that the welfare ratio of the CCA is at least Ω C · log m log log m .

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“…A variant of the CCA was first suggested by Ausubel et al () and further developed in Cramton (). Ausubel and Baranov () discuss the evolution of the CCA. Gretschko et al () discuss why bidding can be complicated in a CCA.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

On the clock of the combinatorial clock auction

Janssen

Kasberger

2019

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The combinatorial clock auction (CCA) has frequently been used in recent spectrum auctions. It combines a dynamic clock phase and a one-off supplementary round. The winning allocation and the corresponding prices are determined by the Vickrey-Clarke-Groves rules. These rules should encourage truthful bidding, whereas the clock phase is intended to reveal information. We inquire into the role of the clock when bidders have lexicographic preferences for raising rivals' costs. We show that in an efficient equilibrium, the clock cannot fully reveal bidders' types. In the spirit of the ratchet effect, in the supplementary round competitors extract surplus from strong bidders whose type is revealed. We also show that if there is substantial room for information revelation, that is, if the uncertainty about the final allocation is large, all equilibria of the CCA are inefficient. Qualitative features of our equilibria are in line with evidence concerning bidding behavior in some recent CCAs.

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Market Design and the Evolution of the Combinatorial Clock Auction

Cited by 21 publications

References 0 publications

An Iterative On-Line Auction Mechanism for Aggregated Demand-Side Participation

An Iterative On-Line Auction Mechanism for Aggregated Demand-Side Participation

On the Economic Efficiency of the Combinatorial Clock Auction

On the clock of the combinatorial clock auction

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