Lookahead auctions with pooling (Q6164500)

Our main result is an improved bound on the approximation ratio of lookahead auction with pooling (LAP). The following is valid: Theorem. For any setting with an arbitrary number of independent bidders, LAP achieves a \(\frac{4}{7}\)-approximation to the optimal revenue. In Section 4, the authors construct a correlated distribution with the following unnatural ''cryptographic'' feature: the seller can precisely recover the value of the lower bidder from the bid of the higher bidder, while the lower bid reveals almost no useful information about the top value. The following proposition is valid: Theorem. No LAP mechanism achieves better than \(\frac{1}{2} +o(1)\) approximation to the optimal revenue for the above instance of correlated distribution. For the entire collection see [Zbl 1515.91014].