Credible, Strategyproof, Optimal, and Bounded Expected-Round Single-Item Auctions for all Distributions

TL;DR

This paper introduces a new auction mechanism that is credible, strategyproof, revenue-maximizing, and terminates in constant expected rounds for all distributions with finite monopoly price, overcoming previous limitations.

Contribution

It presents a novel auction design that guarantees credibility, strategyproofness, optimal revenue, and constant expected communication rounds for all distributions with finite monopoly price.

Findings

Achieves credibility and strategyproofness for all distributions with finite monopoly price.

Ensures revenue optimality in the proposed auction.

Operates in constant expected rounds, improving efficiency over prior methods.

Abstract

We consider a revenue-maximizing seller with a single item for sale to multiple buyers with i.i.d. valuations. Akbarpour and Li (2020) show that the only optimal, credible, strategyproof auction is the ascending price auction with reserves which has unbounded communication complexity. Recent work of Ferreira and Weinberg (2020) circumvents their impossibility result assuming the existence of cryptographically secure commitment schemes, and designs a two-round credible, strategyproof, optimal auction. However, their auction is only credible when buyers' valuations are MHR or $\alpha$-strongly regular: they show their auction might not be credible even when there is a single buyer drawn from a non-MHR distribution. In this work, under the same cryptographic assumptions, we identify a new single-item auction that is credible, strategyproof, revenue optimal, and terminates in constant rounds in expectation for all distributions with finite monopoly price.