Dynamic Revenue Maximization with Heterogeneous Objects: A Mechanism Design Approach
研究在截止日期前，如何将多个不同价值的物品分配给陆续到达的、有私人信息的急迫买家，以实现收益最大化。通过变分法推导最优分配策略，并用于解释清仓销售中的定价规律。
We study the revenue-maximizing allocation of several heterogeneous, commonly ranked objects to impatient agents with privately known characteristics who arrive sequentially. There is a deadline after which no more objects can be allocated. We first characterize implementable allocation schemes, and compute the expected revenue for any implementable, deterministic and Markovian allocation policy. The revenue-maximizing policy is obtained by a variational argument which sheds more light on its properties than the usual dynamic programming approach. Finally, we use our main result in order to derive the optimal inventory choice, and explain empirical regularities about pricing in clearance sales.