We investigate the algorithmic performance of Vickrey-Clarke-Groves mechanisms in the single item case. We provide a formal definition of a Vickrey algorithm for this framework, and give a number of examples of Vickrey algorithms. We consider three performance criteria, one corresponding to a...

In this paper we analyze equilibria in competitive environments under constraints across players'' strategies. This means that the action taken by one player limits the possible choices of the other players. In this context the classical approach, Kakutani''s Fixed Point theorem, does not work....

We consider graphs that can be embedded on a surface of bounded genus such that each edge has a bounded number of crossings. We prove that many optimization problems, including maximum independent set, minimum vertex cover, minimum dominating set and many others, admit polynomial time...

We provide two new characterizations of exact games. First, a game is exact if and only if it is exactly balanced; and second, a game is exact if and only if it is totally balanced and overbalanced. The condition of exact balancedness is identical to the one of balancedness, except that one of the...

We consider several parallel machine scheduling settings with the objective to minimize the schedule makespan. The most general of these settings is unrelated parallel machine scheduling. We assume that, in addition to its machine dependence, the processing time of any job is dependent on the...

We study a dynamic pricing problem for a company that sells a single product to a group of customers over a finite time horizon. These customers are price sensitive and the price of today influences the group of customers of tomorrow. The objective is to set the prices over time so as to...

The paper introduces a model for online parallel machine scheduling, where any single machine is run on the basis of a locally optimal sequencing policy. Jobs choose the machine on which they want to be processed themselves, and in addition, any job owns a piece of private information, namely...

The minimization of the makespan of a printed circuit board assembly process is a complex problem. Decisions involved in this problem concern the specification of the order in which components are to be placed on the board, and the assignment of component types to the feeder slots of the...

We study the online version of the classical parallel machine scheduling problem to minimize the total weighted completion time from a new perspective: We assume a strategic setting, where the data of each job j, namely its release date r(j) , its processing time p(j) and its weight w(j) is only...

This paper introduces new ejection chain strategies to effectively target vehicle routing problems with time window constraints (VRPTW). Ejection chain procedures are based on the idea of compound moves that allow a variable number of solution components to be modified within any single...