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Dengji Zhao

Bio: Dengji Zhao is an academic researcher from ShanghaiTech University. The author has contributed to research in topics: Computer science & Common value auction. The author has an hindex of 10, co-authored 53 publications receiving 320 citations. Previous affiliations of Dengji Zhao include University of Western Ontario & University of Toulouse.


Papers
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Proceedings Article
10 Feb 2017
TL;DR: Wang et al. as discussed by the authors proposed a novel auction mechanism called information diffusion mechanism (IDM), which incentivizes the buyers to not only truthfully report their valuations on the commodity to the seller, but also further propagate the auction information to all their neighbors.
Abstract: This paper studies an auction design problem for a seller to sell a commodity in a social network, where each individual (the seller or a buyer) can only communicate with her neighbors. The challenge to the seller is to design a mechanism to incentivize the buyers, who are aware of the auction, to further propagate the information to their neighbors so that more buyers will participate in the auction and hence, the seller will be able to make a higher revenue. We propose a novel auction mechanism, called information diffusion mechanism (IDM), which incentivizes the buyers to not only truthfully report their valuations on the commodity to the seller, but also further propagate the auction information to all their neighbors. In comparison, the direct extension of the well-known Vickrey-Clarke-Groves (VCG) mechanism in social networks can also incentivize the information diffusion, but it will decrease the seller's revenue or even lead to a deficit sometimes. The formalization of the problem has not yet been addressed in the literature of mechanism design and our solution is very significant in the presence of large-scale online social networks.

61 citations

Proceedings Article
09 Jul 2018
TL;DR: This paper designs a novel promotion mechanism that incentivizes all buyers, who are aware of the sale, to invite all their neighbours to join thesale, even though there is no guarantee that their efforts will be paid.
Abstract: We consider a market where a seller sells multiple units of a commodity in a social network. Each node/buyer in the social network can only directly communicate with her neighbours, i.e. the seller can only sell the commodity to her neighbours if she could not find a way to inform other buyers. In this paper, we design a novel promotion mechanism that incentivizes all buyers, who are aware of the sale, to invite all their neighbours to join the sale, even though there is no guarantee that their efforts will be paid. While traditional sale promotions such as sponsored search auctions cannot guarantee a positive return for the advertiser (the seller), our mechanism guarantees that the seller's revenue is better than not using the advertising. More importantly, the seller does not need to pay if the advertising is not beneficial to her.

52 citations

Proceedings ArticleDOI
06 May 2013
TL;DR: A novel, two-sided market for advance reservations for electric vehicles, in which agents, representing EV owners, report their preferences for time slots and charging locations, while charging stations report their availability and costs is proposed.
Abstract: With the growing popularity of electric vehicles (EVs), the number of public charging stations is increasing rapidly, allowing drivers to charge their cars while parked away from home or en-route to their destination. However, as a full charge can take a significant amount of time, drivers may face queues and uncertainty over availability of charging facilities at different stations and times. In this paper, we address this problem by proposing a novel, two-sided market for advance reservations, in which agents, representing EV owners, report their preferences for time slots and charging locations, while charging stations report their availability and costs. In our model, both parties are rational, profit-maximising entities, and buyers enter the market dynamically over time. Given this, we apply techniques from online mechanism design to develop a pricing mechanism which is truthful on the buyer side (i.e., drivers have no incentive to misreport their preferences or to delay their reservations). For the seller side, we adapt three well-known pricing mechanisms and compare them both theoretically and empirically. Using realistic simulations, we demonstrate that two of our proposed mechanisms consistently achieve a high efficiency (90-95% of optimal), while offering a trade-off between stability and budget balance. Surprisingly, the third mechanism, a common payment mechanism that is truthful in simpler settings, achieves a significantly lower efficiency and runs a high deficit.

43 citations

Proceedings ArticleDOI
05 May 2014
TL;DR: It is shown that, for this system, the well-known Vickrey-Clarke-Groves (VCG) mechanism is incentive compatible (IC), individually rational (IR) and efficient (i.e., minimizing cost), but results in a very high deficit, thus requiring large subsidies.
Abstract: This paper proposes a novel market-based system for ridesharing, where commuters are matched based on their declared travel constraints, the number of available seats (which could be zero), and their costs. Based on this information, the system then designates commuters to be either drivers or riders, finds appropriate matches, and calculates rewards for drivers and payments for riders. We show that, for this system, the well-known Vickrey-Clarke-Groves (VCG) mechanism is incentive compatible (IC), individually rational (IR) and efficient (i.e., minimizing cost), but results in a very high deficit, thus requiring large subsidies. We therefore investigate alternative mechanisms. We first consider mechanisms with fixed prices and show that no such mechanism can be both efficient and IC. Thus, we propose an inefficient IC mechanism but which has deficit control. We then consider a VCG mechanism with two-sided reserve prices. We show that this mechanism is IC and IR for a certain range of reserve prices, and we analyse the deficit bounds and how these can be controlled. We furthermore show that the deficit can be controlled even further by limiting the (costly) detours taken by the drivers when computing the allocations, thereby trading off efficiency and deficit.

37 citations

Posted Content
TL;DR: This paper proposes a novel auction mechanism, called information diffusion mechanism (IDM), which incentivizes the buyers to not only truthfully report their valuations on the commodity to the seller, but also further propagate the auction information to all their neighbors.
Abstract: This paper studies an auction design problem for a seller to sell a commodity in a social network, where each individual (the seller or a buyer) can only communicate with her neighbors. The challenge to the seller is to design a mechanism to incentivize the buyers, who are aware of the auction, to further propagate the information to their neighbors so that more buyers will participate in the auction and hence, the seller will be able to make a higher revenue. We propose a novel auction mechanism, called information diffusion mechanism (IDM), which incentivizes the buyers to not only truthfully report their valuations on the commodity to the seller, but also further propagate the auction information to all their neighbors. In comparison, the direct extension of the well-known Vickrey-Clarke-Groves (VCG) mechanism in social networks can also incentivize the information diffusion, but it will decrease the seller's revenue or even lead to a deficit sometimes. The formalization of the problem has not yet been addressed in the literature of mechanism design and our solution is very significant in the presence of large-scale online social networks.

28 citations


Cited by
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Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: It is shown that the full set of hydromagnetic equations admit five more integrals, besides the energy integral, if dissipative processes are absent, which made it possible to formulate a variational principle for the force-free magnetic fields.
Abstract: where A represents the magnetic vector potential, is an integral of the hydromagnetic equations. This -integral made it possible to formulate a variational principle for the force-free magnetic fields. The integral expresses the fact that motions cannot transform a given field in an entirely arbitrary different field, if the conductivity of the medium isconsidered infinite. In this paper we shall show that the full set of hydromagnetic equations admit five more integrals, besides the energy integral, if dissipative processes are absent. These integrals, as we shall presently verify, are I2 =fbHvdV, (2)

1,858 citations

Journal ArticleDOI

784 citations

Book
01 Jan 1997

437 citations

Journal Article
TL;DR: Aumann, Aumann, S. van Damme and Hart as mentioned in this paper proposed a game theoretic analysis of the shapley value in the context of games with many players.
Abstract: Preface (R.J. Aumann, S. Hart). Strategic equilibrium (E. van Damme). Foundations of strategic equilibrium (J. Hillas, E. Kohlberg). Incomplete information (R.J. Aumann, A. Heifetz). Non-zero-sum two-person games (T.E.S. Raghavan). Computing equilibria for two-person games (B. von Stengel). Non-cooperative games with many players (M. Ali Khan, Y. Sun). Stochastic games (J-F. Mertens). Stochastic games: recent results (N. Vieille). Game theory and industrial organization (K. Bagwell, A. Wolinsky). Bargaining with incomplete information (L.M. Ausubel, P. Cramton, R.J. Deneckere). Inspection Games (R. Avenhaus, B.V. Stengel, S.Zamir). Economic history and game theory (A. Greif). The shapley value (E. Winter). Variations on the shapley value (D. Monderer, D. Samet). Values of non-transferable utility games (R. McLean). Values of games with infinitely many players (A. Neyman). Values of perfectly competitive economies (S. Hart). Some other economic applications of the value (J-F. Mertens). Strategic aspects of political systems (J. Banks). Game-theoretic analysis of legal rules and institutions (J-P. Benoit, L.A. Kornhauser). Implementation Theory (T. Palfrey). Game Theory and experimental Gaming (M. Shubik).

352 citations