TY - GEN
T1 - Pricing online decisions
T2 - 26th Annual ACM-SIAM Symposium on Discrete Algorithms, SODA 2015
AU - Cohen, Ilan Reuven
AU - Eden, Alon
AU - Fiat, Amos
AU - Jez, Łukasz
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
Copyright © 2015 by the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathmatics.
PY - 2015
Y1 - 2015
N2 - We consider dynamic pricing schemes in online settings where selfish agents generate online events. Previous work on online mechanisms has dealt almost entirely with the goal of maximizing social welfare or revenue in an auction settings. This paper deals with quite general settings and minimizing social costs. We show that appropriately computed posted prices allow one to achieve essentially the same performance as the best online algorithm. This holds in a wide variety of settings. Unlike online algorithms that learn about the event, and then make en-forcable decisions, prices are posted without knowing the future events or even the current event, and are thus inherently dominant strategy incentive compatible. In particular we show that one can give efficient posted price mechanisms for metrical task systems, some instances of the κ-server problem, and metrical matching problems. We give both deterministic and randomized algorithms. Such posted price mechanisms decrease the social cost dramatically over selfish behavior where no decision incurs a charge. One alluring application of this is reducing the social cost of free parking exponentially.
AB - We consider dynamic pricing schemes in online settings where selfish agents generate online events. Previous work on online mechanisms has dealt almost entirely with the goal of maximizing social welfare or revenue in an auction settings. This paper deals with quite general settings and minimizing social costs. We show that appropriately computed posted prices allow one to achieve essentially the same performance as the best online algorithm. This holds in a wide variety of settings. Unlike online algorithms that learn about the event, and then make en-forcable decisions, prices are posted without knowing the future events or even the current event, and are thus inherently dominant strategy incentive compatible. In particular we show that one can give efficient posted price mechanisms for metrical task systems, some instances of the κ-server problem, and metrical matching problems. We give both deterministic and randomized algorithms. Such posted price mechanisms decrease the social cost dramatically over selfish behavior where no decision incurs a charge. One alluring application of this is reducing the social cost of free parking exponentially.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84938244767&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1137/1.9781611973730.7
DO - 10.1137/1.9781611973730.7
M3 - ???researchoutput.researchoutputtypes.contributiontobookanthology.conference???
AN - SCOPUS:84938244767
T3 - Proceedings of the Annual ACM-SIAM Symposium on Discrete Algorithms
SP - 73
EP - 91
BT - Proceedings of the 26th Annual ACM-SIAM Symposium on Discrete Algorithms, SODA 2015
PB - Association for Computing Machinery
Y2 - 4 January 2015 through 6 January 2015
ER -