REVIEW 3 major objections 4 minor 136 references
Learning Truthful Mechanisms without Discretization
T0 review · 3 major / 4 minor · reviewed 2026-08-06 · deepseek-v4-flash
Pith's one-line read TEDI represents truthful mechanisms as convex pricing rules and learns them directly on continuous outcome spaces, avoiding discretization.
desk verdict A genuinely new discretization-free truthful mechanism learner with solid architecture and experiments, but the truthfulness guarantee is certified only for exact inference while Algorithm 6 runs a finite heuristic; fixable and worth refereeing. read the letter →
The pith
A machine-rendered reading of the paper's core claim, the machinery that carries it, and where it could break.
The reading
What carries the argument
The central object is the pricing rule: a function $p_i(x_i; t_{-i})$ that names the price player $i$ pays for local outcome $x_i$ given reports of others. TEDI writes each pricing rule as $f(x_i,t_{-i};\theta) - f(0,t_{-i};\theta)$, which enforces no-buy-no-pay, and represents $f$ with a Partial GroupMax Network—a network whose affine layers (except the first) have nonnegative weights generated by a parameterized affine network and whose activations are group-wise maxes. This makes $f$ convex in $x_i$, since a positive sum and pointwise maximum of convex functions stay convex, and the paper shows these networks are universal approximators of functions convex in $x_i$ and continuous in $t_{-i}$. The second mechanism is the covariance trick: because the training distribution is an exponential (Gibbs) distribution over outcomes, the gradient of an expectation under it equals the expectation of the gradient plus a covariance with the weighted affine social welfare, which can be estimated unbiasedly from paired samples. Third, continuous sampling uses Langevin dynamics to keep samples approximately drawn from the current Gibbs distribution as $\theta$ changes. Together, the architecture guarantees the menu is truth-inducing, and the gradient estimator makes optimizing it a first-order optimization problem.
What would settle it
On a trained TEDI menu, replace Algorithm 6's SGD inference with an exact convex solver and compare the resulting direct mechanism: any type profile at which the exact best response differs from the SGD-chosen outcome shows the deployed mechanism is not the certified truthful one, and a misreport that gains positive utility would settle that the approximation breaks incentive compatibility.
Extended reading notes
Core claim
On the paper's own terms: in outcome-separable quasi-linear settings (digital goods, procurement, multi-good monopolist), learning an optimal truthful mechanism is equivalent to learning a menu of pricing rules. Each rule maps a player's local outcome to a price, and two conditions on the rule suffice: it is convex in the local outcome and it satisfies no-buy-no-pay, meaning the zero bundle costs nothing. The paper proves both directions: any menu mechanism with these two properties induces a truthful direct mechanism, and any truthful direct mechanism can be represented this way. Because Partial GroupMax Networks are universal approximators of exactly these partially convex functions, a parameterized family can represent the truthful-mechanism class, and the supreme expected utility achievable by TEDI menus equals that of all truthful mechanisms. Training uses a covariance trick that turns gradients through the sampling distribution into a computable expectation, together with continuous sampling via Langevin dynamics. The implemented system therefore learns pricing rules directly on continuous outcome spaces, and the Bernoulli digital-goods example has an $O(m)$-parameter representation where discretized menus require $\Omega(2^m)$ candidates.
Load-bearing premise
Truthfulness requires the deployed inference to return an exact global maximizer of each player's concave utility, while the algorithm's inference step performs 5,000 SGD iterations and reports residual accuracy rather than a certificate of global optimality.
Editorial extensions
If this is right
- Any direct mechanism that is exactly equivalent to a TEDI menu mechanism is dominant-strategy incentive compatible and individually rational.
- The class of mechanisms TEDI can represent achieves the same supreme expected utility as the class of all truthful mechanisms, so no truthful mechanism is out of reach by approximation.
- TEDI removes outcome discretization: the optimal Bernoulli digital-goods mechanism is expressed with $O(m)$ parameters instead of $\Omega(2^m)$ menu entries.
- Training only needs an unbiased gradient estimator and samples from the current distribution, so standard first-order optimizers such as Adam can be used.
- In the studied reproducible-goods auctions, TEDI reaches about 98 percent of optimal revenue in the ten-good Bernoulli case and matches or exceeds all compared learning-based and classical baselines.
Reading between the lines
- The truthfulness certificate applies to the exact menu mechanism; a deployment that replaces exact global maximization in the inference step with approximate SGD is not covered by the certificate, so exact convex optimization or a certificate of optimality would be needed to guarantee incentive compatibility in practice.
- The covariance-trick identity is not specific to auctions: any problem where players choose from a continuous set according to a log-concave Gibbs distribution and the designer's payoff is differentiable can be trained this way, which suggests applications beyond mechanism design, such as Stackelberg or contract settings.
- The continuous-sampling step is the computational bottleneck; replacing Langevin re-sampling with a faster or amortized sampler for log-concave distributions, or finding a Partial GroupMax variant with $O(m^2)$ rather than $O(m^3)$ complexity, would improve scalability.
- The paper limits TEDI to outcome-separable problems; extending the menu representation to unit-supply auctions with hard per-good capacity constraints would require additional feasibility handling beyond the penalties discussed in the paper.
Editorial analysis
A structured set of objections, weighed in public.
Referee Report
Summary. The paper proposes TEDI, a discretization-free method for learning truthful mechanisms in outcome-separable quasi-linear domains. It represents a menu mechanism through pricing rules parameterized by a new Partial GroupMax Network, proves that such networks universally approximate partially convex continuous functions, derives an exact covariance-trick identity for gradients of the Gibbs-relaxed objective, and introduces a Langevin-based continuous sampling scheme. The authors claim truthfulness, full expressiveness, and dimension-insensitivity for TEDI, and support the claims with experiments in reproducible-goods auctions, reporting strong performance relative to discretization-based baselines such as MenuNet, GemNet, and LotteryAMA.
Significance. If the guarantees were fully realized by the implemented algorithm, this would be a notable advance: it would provide the first network-based universal approximator for partially convex functions, a parameter-efficient representation of optimal mechanisms in a class of multi-dimensional auction settings, and a genuinely discretization-free route through differentiable economics. The covariance identity and the menu-mechanism equivalence theorem are elegant and appear correct under the stated assumptions. The experimental comparison is informative and includes useful ablations. However, the central truthfulness and expressiveness claims are established only for an idealized exact-argmax version of the mechanism, while the deployed inference is a finite heuristic; this gap is load-bearing and currently prevents the paper's headline claims from being fully supported.
major comments (3)
- [§3.2, Algorithm 6, Corollary 3.7]
- [§3.3.5, Algorithm 1]
- [§3.4, Proposition 3.8 / Theorem B.10]
minor comments (4)
- [Abstract and §1.1]
- [Algorithm 6]
- [Appendix B.3.2, Figure 4]
- [Appendix D.1.2]
Circularity Check
No significant circularity: TEDI's truthfulness, full-expressiveness, and dimension-insensitivity are genuine theorems with self-contained proofs; the two co-author self-citations are not load-bearing.
full rationale
TEDI's derivation chain is self-contained. Corollary 3.7's truthfulness claim rests on Theorem 2.9, which is proved in Appendix C.2 by an explicit Fenchel-conjugate construction from an arbitrary DSIC mechanism to a partial-convex, no-buy-no-pay menu mechanism, together with a direct verification that any equivalent direct mechanism satisfies the textbook IC/IR inequalities of Definition 2.3; truthfulness is defined independently of the construction, so the guarantee is a theorem rather than a definitional restatement. Full expressiveness (Theorem B.10) is an approximation result chained from Theorem 2.9, Proposition B.5, and Lemmas B.8 and B.9; the only imported ingredients are external, classical results: PMA universality from Kim and Kim [67] and neural-network universality from Cybenko [30], neither involving the present authors. The covariance trick (Proposition 3.6) is a genuine log-derivative identity with a proof in Appendix C.1, and the O(m) parameterization of Example 1.1 (Example B.11) is an expressiveness statement about the known linear optimal rule, not a fitted-then-predicted quantity. The two self-citations ([35], [36]) appear only in related-work and future-work passages and are not load-bearing for any central claim. The main caveat, flagged in the paper at Appendix D.1.2, is that Corollary 3.7 certifies only direct mechanisms exactly equivalent to a TEDI menu (exact argmax per Definition 2.6), whereas Algorithm 6 finds the argmax by 5,000 gradient steps and reports residual utility accuracy 'less than 10^{-6}' rather than a global-optimality certificate; a sub-optimal inference point can create an incentive-compatibility gap equal to the utility shortfall. This is an implementation-correctness risk, not a circular reduction: no parameter is fitted to the target quantity and relabeled as a prediction, and no equation reduces to its own input by construction.
Assumptions & free parameters
free parameters (3)
- temperature beta for soft argmax relaxation =
beta_max = 512 or 4096
- Langevin step size eta and inner iterations S =
eta_0 = 0.03 down to 0.01; S = 2 for n=1, S = 16 for n>1
- Partial GroupMax width and depth =
h_x = 64*(m+3), G = 2*(m+3), 1-2 layers
assumptions (7)
- domain assumption Players have quasi-linear additive utilities ui(xi,pi;ti)=<xi,ti>+ci(xi)-pi with ci(0)=0
- domain assumption Type and outcome spaces are compact convex sets, and the global outcome space is separable as X=×Xi
- domain assumption Designer utility u0 is non-decreasing in each payment (Assumption 1)
- domain assumption The type distribution F is non-degenerate (Assumption 2)
- standard math Standard universal approximation theorems for continuous functions and PMA (Cybenko; Kim and Kim)
- standard math Interchange of differentiation and expectation/integration in the covariance trick
- ad hoc to paper Exact global maximization in the inference step
invented entities (3)
-
Pricing rule
-
Menu mechanism represented by pricing rules
-
Partial GroupMax Network
Cite this review
Pith. "Pith review of Learning Truthful Mechanisms without Discretization." pith.science (2026). https://pith.science/paper/PJKT3Y4E
@misc{pith2026250622911,
author = {Pith},
title = {Pith review of: Learning Truthful Mechanisms without Discretization},
year = {2026},
howpublished = {\url{https://pith.science/paper/PJKT3Y4E}},
note = {Machine review of arXiv:2506.22911}
}
read the original abstract
This paper introduces TEDI (Truthful, Expressive, and Dimension-Insensitive approach), a discretization-free algorithm to learn truthful and utility-maximizing mechanisms. Existing learning-based approaches often rely on discretization of outcome spaces to ensure truthfulness, which leads to inefficiency with increasing problem size. To address this limitation, we formalize the concept of pricing rules, defined as functions that map outcomes to prices. Based on this concept, we propose a novel menu mechanism, which can be equivalent to a truthful direct mechanism under specific conditions. The core idea of TEDI lies in its parameterization of pricing rules using Partial GroupMax Network, a new network architecture designed to universally approximate partial convex functions. To learn optimal pricing rules, we develop novel training techniques, including covariance trick and continuous sampling, to derive unbiased gradient estimators compatible with first-order optimization. Theoretical analysis establishes that TEDI guarantees truthfulness, full expressiveness, and dimension-insensitivity. Experimental evaluation in the studied auction setting demonstrates that TEDI achieves strong performance, competitive with or exceeding state-of-the-art methods. This work presents the first approaches to learn truthful mechanisms without outcome discretization, thereby enhancing algorithmic efficiency. The proposed concepts, network architecture, and learning techniques might offer potential value and provide new insights for automated mechanism design and differentiable economics.
Figures
Reference graph
Works this paper leans on
-
[1]
Towards data auctions with externalities
Anish Agarwal et al. “Towards data auctions with externalities”. In: Games and Economic Behavior 148 (2024), pp. 323–356
2024
-
[2]
Automated design of robust mecha- nisms
Michael Albert, Vincent Conitzer, and Peter Stone. “Automated design of robust mecha- nisms”. In: Proceedings of the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence . Vol. 31. 1. 2017
2017
-
[3]
Backpropagation and stochastic gradient descent method
Shun-ichi Amari. “Backpropagation and stochastic gradient descent method”. In: Neuro- computing 5.4-5 (1993), pp. 185–196
1993
-
[4]
Input convex neural networks
Brandon Amos, Lei Xu, and J Zico Kolter. “Input convex neural networks”. In: International conference on machine learning . PMLR. 2017, pp. 146–155
2017
-
[5]
Near-optimal max-affine estimators for convex regression
G´ abor Bal´ azs, Andr´ as Gy¨ orgy, and Csaba Szepesv´ ari. “Near-optimal max-affine estimators for convex regression”. In: Artificial Intelligence and Statistics . PMLR. 2015, pp. 56–64
2015
-
[6]
Sample complexity of automated mechanism design
Maria-Florina F Balcan, Tuomas Sandholm, and Ellen Vitercik. “Sample complexity of automated mechanism design”. In: Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems 29 (2016)
2016
-
[7]
MAC advice for facility loca- tion mechanism design
Zohar Barak, Anupam Gupta, and Inbal Talgam-Cohen. “MAC advice for facility loca- tion mechanism design”. In: Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems 37 (2024), pp. 129564–129604
2024
-
[8]
Universal approximation bounds for superpositions of a sigmoidal func- tion
Andrew R Barron. “Universal approximation bounds for superpositions of a sigmoidal func- tion”. In: IEEE Transactions on Information theory 39.3 (1993), pp. 930–945
1993
Show all 136 references
-
[9]
Dynamic programming
Richard Bellman. “Dynamic programming”. In: science 153.3731 (1966), pp. 34–37
1966
-
[10]
The curse of highly variable functions for local kernel machines
Yoshua Bengio, Olivier Delalleau, and Nicolas Roux. “The curse of highly variable functions for local kernel machines”. In: Advances in neural information processing systems 18 (2005)
2005
-
[11]
Methodology for Designing Reasonably Expressive Mechanisms with Application to Ad Auctions
Michael Benisch, Norman M Sadeh, and Tuomas Sandholm. “Methodology for Designing Reasonably Expressive Mechanisms with Application to Ad Auctions.” In: IJCAI. 2009, pp. 46–52
2009
-
[12]
Welfare and profit maximization with production costs
Avrim Blum et al. “Welfare and profit maximization with production costs”. In: 2011 IEEE 52nd Annual Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science . IEEE. 2011, pp. 77–86
2011
-
[13]
Large-scale machine learning with stochastic gradient descent
L´ eon Bottou. “Large-scale machine learning with stochastic gradient descent”. In: Pro- ceedings of COMPSTAT’2010: 19th International Conference on Computational Statistic- sParis France, August 22-27, 2010 Keynote, Invited and Contributed Papers. Springer. 2010, pp. 177–186
2010
-
[14]
Convex optimization
Stephen Boyd and Lieven Vandenberghe. Convex optimization. Cambridge university press, 2004
2004
-
[15]
An Introduction to the Theory of Mechanism Design
Tilman B¨ orgers, Daniel Kr¨ ahmer, and Roland Strausz. An Introduction to the Theory of Mechanism Design. Oxford University Press, July 2015. isbn: 9780199734023
2015
-
[16]
Optimal multi-dimensional mechanism design: Reducing revenue to welfare maximization
Yang Cai, Constantinos Daskalakis, and S Matthew Weinberg. “Optimal multi-dimensional mechanism design: Reducing revenue to welfare maximization”. In: 2012 IEEE 53rd Annual Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science . IEEE. 2012, pp. 130–139
2012
-
[17]
Log-sum-exp neural net- works and posynomial models for convex and log-log-convex data
Giuseppe C Calafiore, Stephane Gaubert, and Corrado Possieri. “Log-sum-exp neural net- works and posynomial models for convex and log-log-convex data”. In: IEEE transactions on neural networks and learning systems 31.3 (2019), pp. 827–838. 19
2019
-
[18]
Truthful implementation and preference aggregation in restricted domains
Juan Carlos Carbajal, Andrew McLennan, and Rabee Tourky. “Truthful implementation and preference aggregation in restricted domains”. In: Journal of Economic Theory 148.3 (2013), pp. 1074–1101
2013
-
[19]
Mechanism Design for Facility Location Problem: A Survey
Hau Chan et al. “Mechanism Design for Facility Location Problem: A Survey”. In: The 30th International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI 2021) . 2021, pp. 1–17
2021
-
[20]
Optimal competitive auctions
Ning Chen, Nick Gravin, and Pinyan Lu. “Optimal competitive auctions”. In: Proceedings of the forty-sixth annual ACM symposium on Theory of computing . 2014, pp. 253–262
2014
-
[21]
The complexity of optimal multidimensional pricing
Xi Chen et al. “The complexity of optimal multidimensional pricing”. In: Proceedings of the twenty-fifth annual ACM-SIAM symposium on Discrete algorithms . SIAM. 2014, pp. 1319– 1328
2014
-
[22]
Strategy-proofness and “median voters
Stephen Ching. “Strategy-proofness and “median voters””. In: International Journal of Game Theory 26 (1997), pp. 473–490
1997
-
[23]
Multipart pricing of public goods
Edward H Clarke. “Multipart pricing of public goods”. In: Public choice (1971), pp. 17–33
1971
-
[24]
Incremental mechanism design
Vincent Conitzer and Tuomas W Sandholm. “Incremental mechanism design”. In: (2007)
2007
-
[25]
Differentiable economics for ran- domized affine maximizer auctions
Michael Curry, Tuomas Sandholm, and John Dickerson. “Differentiable economics for ran- domized affine maximizer auctions”. In: Proceedings of the Thirty-Second International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence . 2023, pp. 2633–2641
2023
-
[26]
Automated design of affine maximizer mechanisms in dynamic set- tings
Michael Curry et al. “Automated design of affine maximizer mechanisms in dynamic set- tings”. In: Proceedings of the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence . Vol. 38. 9. 2024, pp. 9626–9635
2024
-
[27]
Certifying strategyproof auction networks
Michael Curry et al. “Certifying strategyproof auction networks”. In: Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems 33 (2020), pp. 4987–4998
2020
-
[28]
Optimal Automated Market Makers: Differentiable Economics and Strong Duality
Michael J Curry, Zhou Fan, and David C Parkes. “Optimal Automated Market Makers: Differentiable Economics and Strong Duality”. In: arXiv preprint arXiv:2402.09129 (2024)
2024 arXiv
-
[29]
Learning revenue-maximizing auctions with differentiable matching
Michael J Curry et al. “Learning revenue-maximizing auctions with differentiable matching”. In: International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Statistics. PMLR. 2022, pp. 6062– 6073
2022
-
[30]
Approximation by superpositions of a sigmoidal function
George Cybenko. “Approximation by superpositions of a sigmoidal function”. In: Mathe- matics of control, signals and systems 2.4 (1989), pp. 303–314
1989
-
[31]
Strong duality for a multiple-good monopolist
Constantinos Daskalakis, Alan Deckelbaum, and Christos Tzamos. “Strong duality for a multiple-good monopolist”. In: Proceedings of the Sixteenth ACM Conference on Economics and Computation . 2015, pp. 449–450
2015
-
[32]
Identifying and attacking the saddle point problem in high-dimensional non-convex optimization
Yann N Dauphin et al. “Identifying and attacking the saddle point problem in high-dimensional non-convex optimization”. In: Advances in neural information processing systems 27 (2014)
2014
-
[33]
Continuity properties of Paretian utility
Gerard Debreu. “Continuity properties of Paretian utility”. In: International Economic Re- view 5.3 (1964), pp. 285–293
1964
-
[34]
Procurement Auctions via Approximately Optimal Submodular Opti- mization
Yuan Deng et al. “Procurement Auctions via Approximately Optimal Submodular Opti- mization”. In: arXiv preprint arXiv:2411.13513 (2024)
2024 arXiv
-
[35]
A context-integrated transformer-based neural network for auction design
Zhijian Duan et al. “A context-integrated transformer-based neural network for auction design”. In: International Conference on Machine Learning . PMLR. 2022, pp. 5609–5626
2022
-
[36]
A scalable neural network for DSIC affine maximizer auction design
Zhijian Duan et al. “A scalable neural network for DSIC affine maximizer auction design”. In: Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems 36 (2024). 20
2024
-
[37]
Mechanism design for large language models
Paul Duetting et al. “Mechanism design for large language models”. In: Proceedings of the ACM on Web Conference 2024 . 2024, pp. 144–155
2024
-
[38]
Deep reinforcement learning in large discrete action spaces
Gabriel Dulac-Arnold et al. “Deep reinforcement learning in large discrete action spaces”. In: arXiv preprint arXiv:1512.07679 (2015)
2015 arXiv
-
[39]
Optimal auctions through deep learning
Paul D¨ utting et al. “Optimal auctions through deep learning”. In: International Conference on Machine Learning . PMLR. 2019, pp. 1706–1715
2019
-
[40]
Optimal auctions through deep learning: Advances in differentiable economics
Paul D¨ utting et al. “Optimal auctions through deep learning: Advances in differentiable economics”. In: Journal of the ACM 71.1 (2024), pp. 1–53
2024
-
[41]
Reverse Auction Relinquishing Broadcast Spectrum Rights
Federal Communications Commission. Reverse Auction Relinquishing Broadcast Spectrum Rights. 2016. url: https://www.fcc.gov/auction/1001
2016
-
[42]
College admissions and the stability of marriage
David Gale and Lloyd S Shapley. “College admissions and the stability of marriage”. In: The American Mathematical Monthly 69.1 (1962), pp. 9–15
1962
-
[43]
Stochastic relaxation, Gibbs distributions, and the Bayesian restoration of images
Stuart Geman and Donald Geman. “Stochastic relaxation, Gibbs distributions, and the Bayesian restoration of images”. In: IEEE Transactions on pattern analysis and machine intelligence 6 (1984), pp. 721–741
1984
-
[44]
Reverse auctions are different from auctions
Matthias Gerstgrasser. “Reverse auctions are different from auctions”. In: Information Pro- cessing Letters 147 (2019), pp. 49–54. issn: 0020-0190. doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ipl. 2019.03.006. url: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0020019019300560
2019 doi
-
[45]
Duality and optimality of auctions for uniform distributions
Yiannis Giannakopoulos and Elias Koutsoupias. “Duality and optimality of auctions for uniform distributions”. In: Proceedings of the fifteenth ACM conference on Economics and computation. 2014, pp. 259–276
2014
-
[46]
Manipulation of voting schemes: a general result
Allan Gibbard. “Manipulation of voting schemes: a general result”. In: Econometrica: journal of the Econometric Society (1973), pp. 587–601
1973
-
[47]
Competitive auctions for multiple digital goods
Andrew V Goldberg and Jason D Hartline. “Competitive auctions for multiple digital goods”. In: European Symposium on Algorithms. Springer. 2001, pp. 416–427
2001
-
[48]
A lower bound on the competitive ratio of truthful auctions
Andrew V Goldberg et al. “A lower bound on the competitive ratio of truthful auctions”. In: STACS 2004: 21st Annual Symposium on Theoretical Aspects of Computer Science, Montpellier, France, March 25-27, 2004. Proceedings 21 . Springer. 2004, pp. 644–655
2004
-
[49]
Deep learning for multi- facility location mechanism design
Noah Golowich, Harikrishna Narasimhan, and David C. Parkes. “Deep learning for multi- facility location mechanism design”. In: IJCAI’18. Stockholm, Sweden: AAAI Press, 2018. isbn: 9780999241127
2018
-
[50]
Deep Learning
Ian Goodfellow, Yoshua Bengio, and Aaron Courville. Deep Learning. http://www.deeplearningbook. org. MIT Press, 2016
2016
-
[51]
Approximation guarantees of Median Mechanism in Rd
Nick Gravin and Jianhao Jia. “Approximation guarantees of Median Mechanism in Rd”. In: ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing (2025)
2025
-
[52]
Incentives in teams
Theodore Groves. “Incentives in teams”. In: Econometrica: Journal of the Econometric So- ciety (1973), pp. 617–631
1973
-
[53]
Settling the sample complexity of single- parameter revenue maximization
Chenghao Guo, Zhiyi Huang, and Xinzhi Zhang. “Settling the sample complexity of single- parameter revenue maximization”. In: Proceedings of the 51st Annual ACM SIGACT Sym- posium on Theory of Computing . 2019, pp. 662–673
2019
-
[54]
Computationally feasible automated mechanism design: General approach and case studies
Mingyu Guo and Vincent Conitzer. “Computationally feasible automated mechanism design: General approach and case studies”. In: Proceedings of the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence. Vol. 24. 1. 2010, pp. 1676–1679. 21
2010
-
[55]
Optimizing affine maximizer auctions via linear programming: an application to revenue maximizing mechanism design for zero-day exploits markets
Mingyu Guo, Hideaki Hata, and Ali Babar. “Optimizing affine maximizer auctions via linear programming: an application to revenue maximizing mechanism design for zero-day exploits markets”. In: PRIMA 2017: Principles and Practice of Multi-Agent Systems: 20th Interna- tional Con...
2017
-
[56]
Prior-Independent Auctions for Heterogeneous Bidders
Guru Guruganesh et al. “Prior-Independent Auctions for Heterogeneous Bidders”. In: Pro- ceedings of the 2024 Annual ACM-SIAM Symposium on Discrete Algorithms (SODA). SIAM. 2024, pp. 1–18
2024
-
[57]
Automated on- line mechanism design and prophet inequalities
Mohammad Taghi Hajiaghayi, Robert Kleinberg, and Tuomas Sandholm. “Automated on- line mechanism design and prophet inequalities”. In: AAAI. Vol. 7. 2007, pp. 58–65
2007
-
[58]
Straightforward individual incentive compatibility in large economies
Peter J Hammond. “Straightforward individual incentive compatibility in large economies”. In: The Review of Economic Studies 46.2 (1979), pp. 263–282
1979
-
[59]
Universal approximation of symmetric and anti-symmetric functions
Jiequn Han et al. “Universal approximation of symmetric and anti-symmetric functions”. In: Communications in Mathematical Sciences 20.5 (2022), pp. 1397–1408
2022
-
[60]
Profit maximization in mechanism design
Jason Hartline and Anna Karlin. “Profit maximization in mechanism design”. In: Algorith- mic Game Theory 331 (2007)
2007
-
[61]
Gaussian Error Linear Units (GELUs)
Dan Hendrycks and Kevin Gimpel. Gaussian Error Linear Units (GELUs) . 2023. arXiv: 1606.08415 [cs.LG]. url: https://arxiv.org/abs/1606.08415
2023 arXiv
-
[62]
Welfare maximization with production costs: A primal dual approach
Zhiyi Huang and Anthony Kim. “Welfare maximization with production costs: A primal dual approach”. In: Games and Economic Behavior 118 (2019), pp. 648–667
2019
-
[63]
Optimal-er auctions through attention
Dmitry Ivanov et al. “Optimal-er auctions through attention”. In: Advances in Neural In- formation Processing Systems 35 (2022), pp. 34734–34747
2022
-
[64]
Posted Price Mechanisms for Online Allocation with Disec- onomies of Scale
Hossein Nekouyan Jazi et al. “Posted Price Mechanisms for Online Allocation with Disec- onomies of Scale”. In: Proceedings of the ACM on Web Conference 2025 . 2025, pp. 2710– 2728
2025
-
[65]
An Online Intelligent Task Pricing Mechanism Based on Reverse Auction in Mobile Crowdsensing Networks for the Internet of Things
Bing Jia et al. “An Online Intelligent Task Pricing Mechanism Based on Reverse Auction in Mobile Crowdsensing Networks for the Internet of Things”. In: 2021 IEEE Symposium Series on Computational Intelligence (SSCI) . IEEE. 2021, pp. 1–6
2021
-
[66]
Estimation of particle transmission by random sampling
Herman Kahn and Theodore E Harris. “Estimation of particle transmission by random sampling”. In: National Bureau of Standards applied mathematics series 12 (1951), pp. 27– 30
1951
-
[67]
Parameterized convex universal approximators for decision- making problems
Jinrae Kim and Youdan Kim. “Parameterized convex universal approximators for decision- making problems”. In: IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and Learning Systems 35.2 (2022), pp. 2448–2459
2022
-
[68]
Kingma and Jimmy Ba
Diederik P. Kingma and Jimmy Ba. Adam: A Method for Stochastic Optimization . 2017. arXiv: 1412.6980 [cs.LG]
2017 arXiv
-
[69]
Bayesian estimates of equation system parameters: an application of integration by Monte Carlo
Teun Kloek and Herman K Van Dijk. “Bayesian estimates of equation system parameters: an application of integration by Monte Carlo”. In: Econometrica: Journal of the Econometric Society (1978), pp. 1–19
1978
-
[70]
Total-cost procurement auctions: Impact of suppliers’ cost adjustments on auction format choice
Dimitris Kostamis, Damian R Beil, and Izak Duenyas. “Total-cost procurement auctions: Impact of suppliers’ cost adjustments on auction format choice”. In: Management Science 55.12 (2009), pp. 1985–1999. 22
2009
-
[71]
Faster first-order methods for extensive-form game solving
Christian Kroer et al. “Faster first-order methods for extensive-form game solving”. In: Pro- ceedings of the Sixteenth ACM Conference on Economics and Computation . 2015, pp. 817– 834
2015
-
[72]
Towards a characterization of truthful combi- natorial auctions
Ron Lavi, Ahuva Mu’Alem, and Noam Nisan. “Towards a characterization of truthful combi- natorial auctions”. In: 44th Annual IEEE Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science,
-
[73]
Two simplified proofs for Roberts’ theorem
Ron Lavi, Ahuva Mu’alem, and Noam Nisan. “Two simplified proofs for Roberts’ theorem”. In: Social Choice and Welfare 32.3 (2009), pp. 407–423
2009
-
[74]
Truthful and near-optimal mechanism design via linear programming
Ron Lavi and Chaitanya Swamy. “Truthful and near-optimal mechanism design via linear programming”. In: Journal of the ACM (JACM) 58.6 (2011), pp. 1–24
2011
-
[75]
Deep learning
Yann LeCun, Yoshua Bengio, and Geoffrey Hinton. “Deep learning”. In: nature 521.7553 (2015), pp. 436–444
2015
-
[76]
Set transformer: A framework for attention-based permutation-invariant neural networks
Juho Lee et al. “Set transformer: A framework for attention-based permutation-invariant neural networks”. In: International conference on machine learning. PMLR. 2019, pp. 3744– 3753
2019
-
[77]
Approximating revenue-maximizing combi- natorial auctions
Alexander Likhodedov and Tuomas Sandholm. “Approximating revenue-maximizing combi- natorial auctions”. In: Proceedings of the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence. Vol. 5. 2005, pp. 267–274
2005
-
[78]
Bundling as an optimal selling mechanism for a multiple-good monopolist
Alejandro M Manelli and Daniel R Vincent. “Bundling as an optimal selling mechanism for a multiple-good monopolist”. In: Journal of Economic Theory 127.1 (2006), pp. 1–35
2006
-
[79]
Microeconomic theory
Andreu Mas-Colell, Michael Dennis Whinston, Jerry R Green, et al. Microeconomic theory. Vol. 1. Oxford University Press New York, 1995
1995
-
[80]
The maximum numbers of faces of a convex polytope
Peter McMullen. “The maximum numbers of faces of a convex polytope”. In: Mathematika 17.2 (1970), pp. 179–184
1970
-
[81]
Equation of state calculations by fast computing machines
Nicholas Metropolis et al. “Equation of state calculations by fast computing machines”. In: The journal of chemical physics 21.6 (1953), pp. 1087–1092
1953
-
[82]
Envelope theorems for arbitrary choice sets
Paul Milgrom and Ilya Segal. “Envelope theorems for arbitrary choice sets”. In: Economet- rica 70.2 (2002), pp. 583–601
2002
-
[83]
A theory of auctions and competitive bidding
Paul R Milgrom and Robert J Weber. “A theory of auctions and competitive bidding”. In: Econometrica: Journal of the Econometric Society (1982), pp. 1089–1122
1982
-
[84]
On strategy-proofness and single peakedness
Herv´ e Moulin. “On strategy-proofness and single peakedness”. In:Public Choice 35.4 (1980), pp. 437–455
1980
-
[85]
Incentive compatibility and the bargaining problem
Roger B Myerson. “Incentive compatibility and the bargaining problem”. In: Econometrica: journal of the Econometric Society (1979), pp. 61–73
1979
-
[86]
Optimal auction design
Roger B Myerson. “Optimal auction design”. In: Mathematics of operations research 6.1 (1981), pp. 58–73
1981
-
[87]
Automated mech- anism design without money via machine learning
Harikrishna Narasimhan, Shivani Brinda Agarwal, and David C Parkes. “Automated mech- anism design without money via machine learning”. In: Proceedings of the 25th International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence . 2016
2016
-
[88]
Affine maximizers in domains with selfish valuations
Swaprava Nath and Arunava Sen. “Affine maximizers in domains with selfish valuations”. In: ACM Transactions on Economics and Computation (TEAC) 3.4 (2015), pp. 1–19. 23
2015
-
[89]
Sur une g´ en´ eralisation des int´ egrales de MJ Radon
Otton Nikodym. “Sur une g´ en´ eralisation des int´ egrales de MJ Radon”. In: Fundamenta Mathematicae 15.1 (1930), pp. 131–179
1930
-
[90]
Algorithmic Game Theory
Noam Nisan et al. “Algorithmic Game Theory”. In: 2007. url: https://api.semanticscholar. org/CorpusID:239540
2007
-
[91]
Optimal mechanism for selling two goods
Gregory Pavlov. “Optimal mechanism for selling two goods”. In: The BE Journal of Theo- retical Economics 11.1 (2011), p. 0000102202193517041664
2011
-
[92]
Preferencenet: Encoding human preferences in auction design with deep learning
Neehar Peri et al. “Preferencenet: Encoding human preferences in auction design with deep learning”. In: Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems 34 (2021), pp. 17532– 17542
2021
-
[93]
Why and when can deep-but not shallow-networks avoid the curse of dimensionality: a review
Tomaso Poggio et al. “Why and when can deep-but not shallow-networks avoid the curse of dimensionality: a review”. In: International Journal of Automation and Computing 14.5 (2017), pp. 503–519
2017
-
[94]
Benefits of permutation-equivariance in auction mechanisms
Tian Qin et al. “Benefits of permutation-equivariance in auction mechanisms”. In: Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems 35 (2022), pp. 18131–18142
2022
-
[95]
Auction learning as a two-player game
Jad Rahme, Samy Jelassi, and S Matthew Weinberg. “Auction learning as a two-player game”. In: arXiv preprint arXiv:2006.05684 (2020)
2020 arXiv
-
[96]
Auction Learning as a Two-Player Game
Jad Rahme, Samy Jelassi, and S. Matthew Weinberg. “Auction Learning as a Two-Player Game”. In: International Conference on Learning Representations . 2021. url: https : / / openreview.net/forum?id=YHdeAO61l6T
2021
-
[97]
A permutation-equivariant neural network architecture for auction de- sign
Jad Rahme et al. “A permutation-equivariant neural network architecture for auction de- sign”. In: Proceedings of the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence . Vol. 35. 2021, pp. 5664–5672
2021
-
[98]
Deep learning for two-sided matching
Sai Srivatsa Ravindranath et al. “Deep learning for two-sided matching”. In: arXiv preprint arXiv:2107.03427 (2021)
2021 arXiv
-
[99]
url: https : / / www
Reproducible and Non-Reproducible Goods - Okpedia . url: https : / / www . okpedia . com / reproducible-and-non-reproducible-goods (visited on 06/09/2025)
2025
-
[100]
Exponential convergence of Langevin distribu- tions and their discrete approximations
Gareth O Roberts and Richard L Tweedie. “Exponential convergence of Langevin distribu- tions and their discrete approximations”. In: (1996)
1996
-
[101]
The characterization of implementable choice rules
Kevin Roberts. “The characterization of implementable choice rules”. In: Aggregation and revelation of preferences 12.2 (1979), pp. 321–348
1979
-
[102]
A necessary and sufficient condition for rationalizability in a quasi- linear context
Jean-Charles Rochet. “A necessary and sufficient condition for rationalizability in a quasi- linear context”. In: Journal of mathematical Economics 16.2 (1987), pp. 191–200
1987
-
[103]
Automated mechanism design: A new application area for search al- gorithms
Tuomas Sandholm. “Automated mechanism design: A new application area for search al- gorithms”. In: International Conference on Principles and Practice of Constraint Program- ming. Springer. 2003, pp. 19–36
2003
-
[104]
Automated Design of Revenue-Maximizing Combinatorial Auctions
Tuomas Sandholm and Anton Likhodedov. “Automated Design of Revenue-Maximizing Combinatorial Auctions”. In: Operations Research 63.5 (2015), pp. 1000–1025
2015
-
[105]
Strategy-proofness and Arrow’s conditions: Existence and cor- respondence theorems for voting procedures and social welfare functions
Mark Allen Satterthwaite. “Strategy-proofness and Arrow’s conditions: Existence and cor- respondence theorems for voting procedures and social welfare functions”. In: Journal of economic theory 10.2 (1975), pp. 187–217
1975
-
[106]
On cores and indivisibility
Lloyd Shapley and Herbert Scarf. “On cores and indivisibility”. In: Journal of mathematical economics 1.1 (1974), pp. 23–37. 24
1974
-
[107]
Automated Mechanism Design via Neural Networks
Weiran Shen, Pingzhong Tang, and Song Zuo. “Automated Mechanism Design via Neural Networks”. In: Proceedings of the 18th International Conference on Autonomous Agents and MultiAgent Systems. 2019, pp. 215–223
2019
-
[108]
Electronic reverse auctions: Promises, risks and conditions for success
Larry R Smeltzer and Amelia S Carr. “Electronic reverse auctions: Promises, risks and conditions for success”. In: Industrial Marketing Management 32.6 (2003), pp. 481–488
2003
-
[109]
Score-based generative modeling through stochastic differential equations
Yang Song et al. “Score-based generative modeling through stochastic differential equations”. In: arXiv preprint arXiv:2011.13456 (2020)
2020 arXiv
-
[110]
Truthful Aggregation of LLMs with an Application to Online Advertising
Ermis Soumalias, Michael J Curry, and Sven Seuken. “Truthful Aggregation of LLMs with an Application to Online Advertising”. In: arXiv preprint arXiv:2405.05905 (2024)
2024 arXiv
-
[111]
Analysis and Optimization of Multi- Dimensional Percentile Mechanisms
Xin Sui, Craig Boutilier, and Tuomas Sandholm. “Analysis and Optimization of Multi- Dimensional Percentile Mechanisms.” In: IJCAI. Citeseer. 2013, pp. 367–374
2013
-
[112]
Mechanism Design for LLM Fine-tuning with Multiple Reward Models
Haoran Sun et al. “Mechanism Design for LLM Fine-tuning with Multiple Reward Models”. In: arXiv preprint arXiv:2405.16276 (2024)
2024
-
[113]
Reinforcement learning: An introduction
Richard S Sutton, Andrew G Barto, et al. Reinforcement learning: An introduction. Vol. 1
-
[114]
Threshold policies with tight guarantees for online selection with convex costs
Xiaoqi Tan et al. “Threshold policies with tight guarantees for online selection with convex costs”. In: ACM Transactions on Economics and Computation 13.2 (2025), pp. 1–49
2025
-
[115]
MIT press Cambridge, 1998
1998
-
[116]
Market structure and equilibrium
Heinrich Von Stackelberg. Market structure and equilibrium . Springer Science & Business Media, 2010
2010
-
[117]
Counterspeculation, auctions, and competitive sealed tenders
William Vickrey. “Counterspeculation, auctions, and competitive sealed tenders”. In: The Journal of finance 16.1 (1961), pp. 8–37
1961
-
[118]
Deep contract design via discontinuous networks
Tonghan Wang et al. “Deep contract design via discontinuous networks”. In: Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems 36 (2024)
2024
-
[119]
GemNet: Menu-Based, Strategy- Proof Multi-Bidder Auctions Through Deep Learning
Tonghan Wang, Yanchen Jiang, and David C Parkes. “GemNet: Menu-Based, Strategy- Proof Multi-Bidder Auctions Through Deep Learning”. In: Proceedings of the 25th ACM Conference on Economics and Computation . 2024, p. 1100
2024
-
[120]
Dominant-strategy versus bayesian multi-item auctions: Maximum revenue determination and comparison
Andrew Chi-Chih Yao. “Dominant-strategy versus bayesian multi-item auctions: Maximum revenue determination and comparison”. In: Proceedings of the 2017 ACM Conference on Economics and Computation . 2017, pp. 3–20
2017
-
[121]
The GroupMax neural network approximation of convex functions
Xavier Warin. “The GroupMax neural network approximation of convex functions”. In: IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and Learning Systems (2023)
2023
-
[122]
Deep sets
Manzil Zaheer et al. “Deep sets”. In: Advances in neural information processing systems 30 (2017)
2017
-
[123]
Error bounds for approximations with deep ReLU networks
Dmitry Yarotsky. “Error bounds for approximations with deep ReLU networks”. In: Neural networks 94 (2017), pp. 103–114
2017
-
[125]
Automated dynamic mechanism design
Hanrui Zhang and Vincent Conitzer. “Automated dynamic mechanism design”. In: Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems 34 (2021), pp. 27785–27797. 25 A Preface to the Appendix Before delving into appendix, we first make some changes in notations, which makes the techni...
2021
-
[126]
M m satisfies partial convexity
-
[127]
M m satisfies no-buy-no-pay
-
[128]
xd i (t) ∈ argmaxxi∈Xivi(xi; ti) − pm i (xi; t−i)
-
[129]
Proof of (1)
pd i (t) = pm i (xd i (t); t−i). Proof of (1). Note that pm i (xi; t−i)−ci(xi) = supti∈Ti⟨ti, xi⟩− ˜ud i (t) is exactly the Fenchel conjugate of −˜ud i (t) w.r.t. ti. Therefore, it’s convex by nature of Fenchel conjugate [14]. This completes the partial convexity. Proof of (2)...
-
[130]
ui j(xi; t−i) is convex on xi
-
[131]
0 ≤ ∇xiui j(xi; t−i) ≤ ¯ti
-
[132]
l∞(ui 1(·; t−i), ui 2(·; t−i)) ≤ δ
-
[133]
xi j(ti; t−i) ∈ argmaxxi∈Xi⟨xi, ti⟩ −ui j(xi; t−i), where xi j(t) is the i’th element of xj(t). Among them, statement (1) is true because uj(x) − ⟨x−i, t−i⟩ is jointly convex on (xi, x−i), and taking the minimum value on partial variables do not affect the convexity of remaini...
-
[134]
max” is replaced with “differentialmax
:= Z t∈T |xi 1(t) − xi 2(t)|dt = Z t−i∈T−i dt−i Z ti∈Ti |xi 1(ti; t−i) − xi 2(ti; t−i)|dti ≤ Z t−i∈T−i dt−i √ 2δ · [¯xi + ¯ti] 2 = √ 2δ · [¯xi + ¯ti] · Q j̸=i ¯tj 2 = √ 2δ · [¯xi/¯ti + 1] · Q i∈[n] ¯ti 2 and l1(x1, x2) = X i∈[n] l1(xi 1, xi 2) ≤ √ 2δ · [P i∈[n] ¯xi/¯ti + n] · ...
-
[135]
algorithmic boundary
discovers that the performance of LotteryAMA highly depends on different initializations, and we discover similar phenomena on MD-MenuNet and MD-GemNet. The instability of initialization appears in the experiment stated below: The optimal mechanism in SU 2 includes 3 determini...
-
[136]
permutation equivariance property
shows that there is always an approach to reduce any mechanism design problem to another equivalent problem with outcome separability. The reduction can be done by penalizing infeasible outcomes onto the designer’s objective. 65 E.2 Open Problems E.2.1 Sampling in Stream. One ...
-
[2003]
Proceedings. IEEE. 2003, pp. 574–583
2003
Reviewed August 6, 2026 · model on record in the stance chip above.
Discussion (0). Sign in to comment.