Abstract: We investigate the power of randomness in the context of a fundamental Bayesian optimal mechanism design problem--a single seller aims to maximize expected revenue by allocating multiple kinds of resources to "unit-demand" agents with preferences drawn from a known distribution. When the agents' preferences are single-dimensional Myerson's seminal work [Myerson '81] shows that randomness offers no benefit--the optimal mechanism is always deterministic. In the multi-dimensional case, where each agent's preferences are given by different values f...
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Topics: 
Mathematical optimization