On the Competitive Ratio of the Random Sampling Auction

We give a simple analysis of the competitive ratio of the random sampling auction from [10]. The random sampling auction was first shown to be worst-case competitive in [9] (with a bound of 7600 on its competitive ratio); our analysis improves the bound to 15. In support of the conjecture that random sampling auction is in fact 4-competitive, we show that on the equal revenue input, where any sale price gives the same revenue, random sampling is exactly a factor of four from optimal.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2005
• Where: WINE
• Authors: Uriel Feige, Abraham Flaxman, Jason D. Hartline, Robert D. Kleinberg
• Keywords: Competitive Ratio, Economy, Equal Revenue Input, Random Sampling Auction, WINE 2005