Asymptotically Optimal Welfare of Posted Pricing for Multiple Items with MHR Distributions

Alexander Braun, Matthias Buttkus, Thomas Kesselheim

Abstract: We consider the problem of posting prices for unit-demand buyers if all n buyers have identically distributed valuations drawn from a distribution with monotone hazard rate. We show that even with multiple items asymptotically optimal welfare can be guaranteed. Our main results apply to the case that either a buyer’s value for different items are independent or that they are perfectly correlated. We give mechanisms using dynamic prices that obtain a 1 - Θ (1/(log n))-fraction of the optimal social welfare in expectation. Furthermore, we devise mechanisms that only use static item prices and are 1 - Θ ((log log log n)/(log n))-competitive compared to the optimal social welfare. As we show, both guarantees are asymptotically optimal, even for a single item and exponential distributions.