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Poster

Autobidder's Dilemma: Why More Sophisticated Autobidders Lead to Worse Auction Efficiency

Yuan Deng · Jieming Mao · Vahab Mirrokni · Hanrui Zhang · Song Zuo

West Ballroom A-D #6803
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Wed 11 Dec 4:30 p.m. PST — 7:30 p.m. PST

Abstract: The recent increasing adoption of autobidding has inspired the growing interest in analyzing the performance of classic mechanism with value-maximizing autobidders both theoretically and empirically. It is known that optimal welfare can be obtained in first-price auctions if autobidders are restricted to uniform bid-scaling and the price of anarchy is $2$ when non-uniform bid-scaling strategies are allowed. In this paper, we provide a fine-grained price of anarchy analysis for non-uniform bid-scaling strategies in first-price auctions, demonstrating the reason why more powerful (individual) non-uniform bid-scaling strategies may lead to worse (aggregated) performance in social welfare. Our theoretical results match recent empirical findings that a higher level of non-uniform bid-scaling leads to lower welfare performance in first-price auctions.

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