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The Engineering Economist
A Journal Devoted to the Problems of Capital Investment
Volume 52, 2007 - Issue 4
132
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Original Articles

Iterative Multi-AttRibute Multi-Unit Reverse Auctions

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Pages 333-354 | Published online: 28 Nov 2007
 

Abstract

This article studies iterative multi-attribute auctions for multi-unit procurement. Order splitting among suppliers is allowed in auctions to improve efficiency and take advantage of suppliers' cost structures. Suppliers are also allowed to provide discriminative prices over units based on their cost structures. A mechanism called iterative multi-attribute multi-unit reverse auction (IMMRA) is proposed based on the assumption of the modified myopic best-response strategies. Results from numerical experiments show that the IMMRA achieves market efficiency in most instances. The inefficiency occurs occasionally in special cases when cost structures are significantly different among suppliers. Numerical results also show that the IMMRA results in lower buyer payments than the traditional Vickrey-Clarke-Grove (VCG) payments in most cases without significantly hurting market efficiency.

Notes

*Indicates the provisional allocation.

*Italic values mean that the IMMRA is worse than the VCG auction.

*Indicates the provisional allocation.

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