A Qualitative Vickrey Auction B. Paul Harrenstein Mathijs M. de Weerdt Vincent Conitzer Theoretical Computer Science Department of Software Department of Computer University of Munich Technology Science Munich, Germany Delft University of Technology Duke University
[email protected]fi.lmu.de Delft, The Netherlands Durham, NC, USA
[email protected] [email protected] ABSTRACT Keywords Restricting the preferences of the agents by assuming that Mechanism Design without Money, Auctions their utility functions linearly depend on a payment allows for the positive results of the Vickrey auction and the Vickrey- 1. INTRODUCTION Clarke-Groves mechanism. These results, however, are lim- Although it may often seem otherwise, even nowadays, ited to settings where there is some commonly desired com- money is not always the primary issue in a negotiation. modity or numeraire|money, shells, beads, etcetera|which Consider, for instance, a buyer with a fixed budget, such is commensurable with utility. We propose a generalization as a government issuing a request for proposals for a specific of the Vickrey auction that does not assume that the agents' public project, a scientist selecting a new computer using preferences are quasilinear, but nevertheless retains some of a fixed budget earmarked for this purpose, or an employee the Vickrey auction's desirable properties. In this auction, organizing a grand day out for her colleagues. In such set- a bid can be any alternative, rather than just a monetary tings, the buyer has preferences over all possible offers that offer. As a consequence, the auction is also applicable to can be made to him.