FAIRNESS IN RECURRENT AUCTIONS WITH COMPETING MARKETS AND SUPPLY FLUCTUATIONS

Auctions have been used to deal with resource allocation in multiagent environments, especially in service‐oriented electronic markets. In this type of market, resources are perishable and auctions are repeated over time with the same or a very similar set of agents. In this scenario it is advisable to use recurrent auctions: a sequence of auctions of any kind where the result of one auction may influence the following one. Some problems do appear in these situations, as for instance, the bidder drop problem, the asymmetric balance of negotiation power or resource waste, which could cause the market to collapse. Fair mechanisms can be useful to minimize the effects of these problems. With this aim, we have analyzed four previous fair mechanisms under dynamic scenarios and we have proposed a new one that takes into account changes in the supply as well as the presence of alternative marketplaces. We experimentally show how the new mechanism presents a higher average performance under all simulated conditions, resulting in a higher profit for the auctioneer than with the previous ones, and in most cases avoiding the waste of resources.