Full surplus extraction from samples (Q2025025)

The article sheds some light on the important dilemma -- whether an auctioneer who has only partial knowledge of the distribution of buyers' valuations can extract the full surplus. The main result is the identification of the number of samples that are necessary and sufficient for full surplus extraction. With a precise mathematical apparatus, the authors prove the following result: The number of samples is the number of distributions minus the dimension of the set of the set of distributions, plus one. It is shown that this bound is tight.