talk on internet auctions...

[Subbarao Kambhampati <rao@parichaalak.eas.asu.edu>]

Here is the information about the talk I mentioned about in the class
yesterday. 


Speaker: Dr. Makoto Yokoo, NTT Communication Science Labs, JAPAN

Venue: GWC 308 Thursday April 19th 10AM

Title: Theory of Internet Auctions: Effect of False-name Bids
       on Auction Protocols


Abstract:
In this talk, we examine the effect of a new type of frauds
called false-name bids, which can be a serious problem in Internet
auctions.  False-name bids are bids submitted by a single agent under
multiple fictitious names (e.g., multiple e-mail addresses). If there
exists no false-name bid, the Generalized Vickrey Auction protocol
(GVA) satisfies three desirable properties, i.e., individual
rationality, Pareto efficiency, and incentive compatibility. On the
other hand, when false-name bids are possible, we prove that it is
theoretically impossible for an auction protocol to simultaneously
satisfy these three properties.  We develop a new auction protocol
called Leveled Division Set (LDS) protocol, which satisfies individual
rationality and incentive compatibility.

Brief Personal History:
Dr. Makoto Yokoo is currently a distinguished technical member in NTT
Communication Science Laboratories, Kyoto, Japan. His research
interests include multi-agent systems, search/constraint satisfaction,
and mechanism design among agents. He recently published a book
"Distributed Constraint Satisfaction: Foundation of Cooperation in
Multi-Agent Systems" from Springer.  He is a board member of
International Foundation of Multi-agent Systems (IFMAS), which is the
host organization of International Conference on Multi-agent systems
(ICMAS). He is also editorial board members and program committee
members of various international journals and conferences, including
Journal on Artificial intelligence Research, IJCAI.

URL: http://www.kecl.ntt.co.jp/csl/ccrg/members/yokoo/
email: yokoo@cslab.kecl.ntt.co.jp