Full surplus extraction from samples

Hu Fu, Nima Haghpanah, Jason Hartline and Robert Kleinberg

Journal of Economic Theory, 2021, vol. 193, issue C

Abstract: We study whether an auctioneer who has only partial knowledge of the distribution of buyers' valuations can extract the full surplus. There is a finite number of possible distributions, and the auctioneer has access to a finite number of samples (independent draws) from the true distribution. Full surplus extraction is possible if the number of samples is at least the difference between the number of distributions and the dimension of the linear space they span, plus one. This bound is tight. The mechanism that extracts the full surplus uses the samples to construct contingent payments, and not for statistical inference.

Keywords: Auction design; Unknown distributions; Samples (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D44 D82 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022053121000478
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jetheo:v:193:y:2021:i:c:s0022053121000478

DOI: 10.1016/j.jet.2021.105230

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Economic Theory is currently edited by A. Lizzeri and K. Shell

More articles in Journal of Economic Theory from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().