Abstract: In a combinatorial auction (CA) with item bidding, several goods are sold simultaneously via single-item auctions. We study how the equilibrium performance of such an auction depends on the choice of the underlying single-item auction. We provide a thorough understanding of the price of anarchy, as a function of the single-item auction payment rule. When the payment rule depends on the winner's bid, as in a first-price auction, we characterize the worst-case price of anarchy in the corresponding CAs with item bidding in terms of a sensitivity m...
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Topics: 
Mathematical economics
Microeconomics