Combinatorial Auctions and Knapsack Problems - An Analysis of Optimization Methods

With the rapid diffusion of the internet different kinds of market designs fore-commerce have emerged. Among these combinatorial auctions (CAs) havegained increased interest as they permit bidders to express their valuationsmore easily. For applying a CA in real world scenarios fast algorithms areneeded to compute the optimal allocation of the offered goods. Althoughmuch research has dealt with this so-called Winner Determination Problem(WDP) only recently has its equivalence to the well-studied multi-dimensionalknapsack problem (MDKP) been noticed. Therefore there is a lack of researchwhich compares approaches for solving MDKP and WDP problems. With thiswork the author Jella Pfeiffer provides the missing integrative step aimingat a more intense understanding and a mutual inspiration of both researchareas. She examines structural differences of test instances from bothdomains compares the performance of different algorithms and alludes to asuccessful search behavior of non-exact but fast algorithms. The bookaddresses readers interested in electronic market design and algorithmssolving complex combinatorial optimization problems.