NeurIPS 2019
Sun Dec 8th through Sat the 14th, 2019 at Vancouver Convention Center
Paper ID:535
Title:Optimal Pricing in Repeated Posted-Price Auctions with Different Patience of the Seller and the Buyer


		
The paper analyzes the setting of a repeated posted-price auction, where the buyer and seller have differing discount factors (\gamma_S, \gamma_B) and explicitly develops algorithms and analysis for the two ordering of these parameters. The setting in interesting and of significant importance to real-world applications. Overall, the reviewers agree that the paper provides several results that make important progress in the setting. There are some aspects that should be updated before considering final: - The algorithm requires knowing the discount rate of the buyer, this needs to be discussed more carefully as done in the reviewer feedback. - The setting requires access to the value distribution D. As pointed out in the paper, a large volume of historical bidding data is available, but this is a record of *strategic* behavior and it is not immediately clear to me that a truthful value distribution can always be extracted. Clarification on this point would be great.