A Simple and Approximately Optimal Mechanism for an Additive Buyer We consider a monopolist seller with n heterogeneousitems, facing a single buyer. The buyer hasa value for each item drawn independently according to(nonidentical) distributions, and his value for a set ofitems is additive. The seller aims to maximize his revenue.It is known that an optimal mechanism in this setting maybe quite complex, requiring randomization 19 and menusof infinite size 15. Hart and Nisan 17 have initiated astudy of two very simple pricing schemes for this setting:item pricing, in which each item is priced at its monopolyreserve; and bundle pricing, in which the entire set ofitems is priced and sold as one bundle. Hart and Nisan 17have shown that neither scheme can guarantee more thana vanishingly small fraction of the optimal revenue. Insharp contrast, we show that for any distributions, thebetter of item and bundle pricing is a constantfactorapproximation to the optimal revenue. We further discussextensions to multiple buyers and to valuations that arecorrelated across items.

Revenue maximization in a Bayesian double auction market Abstract   We study double auction market design where the market maker wants to maximize its total revenue by buying low from the sellers and selling high to the buyers. We consider a Bayesian setting where buyers and sellers have independent probability distributions on the values of products on the market.  For the simplest setting, each seller has one kind of indivisible good with a bounded (integer) amount that can be sold to a buyer, who may demand a bounded number of copies. We develop a maximum mechanism for the market maker to maximize its own revenue.  For the more general case where each selleru0027s product may be different, we consider a number of variants in terms of constraints on supplies and demands. For each of them, we develop a polynomial time computable truthful mechanism for the market maker to achieve a revenue at least a constant  xcexb1  times the revenue of any other truthful mechanism.