Exploring bidding strategies for market-based scheduling
(Download full paper)Filed under research category: Online market design
Tagged as: market-based_scheduling trading_agents auctions automated_markets e-commerce market_design empirical_game_analysis bidding_strategies online_markets incentive-centered_design
Authors
Daniel M. Reeves, Michael. P. Wellman, Jeffrey K. MacKie-Mason, and Anna Osepayshvili
Publication date
March, 2005
Abstract
A market-based scheduling mechanism allocates resources indexed by time to alternative uses based on the bids of participating agents. Agents are typically interested in multiple time slots of the schedulable resource, with value determined by the earliest deadline by which they can complete their corresponding tasks. Despite the strong complementarity among slots induced by such preferences, it is often infeasible to deploy a mechanism that coordinates allocation across all time slots. We explore the case of separate, simultaneous markets for individual time slots, and the strategic problem it poses for bidding agents. Investigation of the straightforward bidding policy and its variants indicates that the efficacy of particular strategies depends critically on preferences and strategies of other agents, and that the strategy space is far too complex to yield to general game-theoretic analysis. For particular environments, however, it is often possible to derive constrained equilibria through evolutionary search methods.
Citation
Decision Support Systems 39(1): 67--85 (March 2005)