Optimal Pricing Mechanisms with Unknown Demand
当买家估值的分布未知时，标准的多单位拍卖无法最大化垄断利润。本文提出一种基于其他买家出价统计推断需求分布来为每个买家定价的机制，其利润随买家数量增加收敛于已知需求时的最优利润。
The standard profit-maximizing multiunit auction intersects the submitted demand curve with a preset reservation supply curve, which is determined using the distribution from which the buyers' valuations are drawn. However, when this distribution is unknown, a preset supply curve cannot maximize monopoly profits. The optimal pricing mechanism in this situation sets a price for each buyer on the basis of the demand distribution inferred statistically from other buyers' bids. The resulting profit converges to the optimal monopoly profit with known demand as the number of buyers goes to infinity, and convergence can be substantially faster than with sequential price experimentation.