A new pricing scheme based on DEA for iterative multi-unit combinatorial auctions

Iterative Multi-unit Combinatorial Auctions are auctions in which: bidders can express bids in successive rounds until a stopping rule is held; there are multiple units of each item; and bids are bundles of items. Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) is a nonparametric method for measuring the relative efficiency of a set of homogeneous units. In this work, we present an algorithm for solving an iterative multi-unit combinatorial auction in which the auctioneer computes at each round a linear anonymous price for each item by using a DEA model and pushes bidders to express bids according to them. A computational study is carried out in order to check the performance of the proposed design.