We aim to design revenue-maximizing single-item auctions that are deterministic, strategy-proof, and ex post individually rational --- the quintessential fundamental model for optimal mechanism design. While Myerson's seminal work solved this model for independent bidders, straightforward extensions to correlated settings often result in non-monotonic, and therefore non-strategy-proof allocations. Critically, optimal allocation design for correlated bidders is NP-hard to approximate, rendering theoretical optimality guarantees in this domain computationally intractable. We establish a new standard of empirical rigor for this theoretically hard model by proposing an empirical pipeline. We synthesize neural interpolation of Myerson's greedy allocation based on marginal profits (the correlated variant of virtual valuation), formal neural verification to enforce exact strategy-proofness, and a constructive repair procedure. Empirically, our method is highly effective, consistently achieves near-optimal revenue across a wide range of distributions, including synthetic, adversarial, and real-world (consumer, financial, and industrial) datasets. Compared to existing manual and neural baselines, our approach shows substantial improvement, often reducing the revenue gap by an order of magnitude. Our study is also the first to introduce (unattainable) greedy revenue as a rigorous upper bound for empirical benchmarking, providing a definitive quantitative performance measure where true optima remain theoretically elusive. We demonstrate the generality of our approach by extending it to multi-unit auctions with unit demand and integrating our verification techniques into RegretNet to achieve exact strategy-proofness.
Figures & tables
Figure 1: Illustration of a 2-bidder setting where axes represent two bids in [0,1] . Blue and red regions denote wins for bidder 1 and 2, respectively. (a) monotone allocation: A strategy-proof allocation where a winner necessarily remains the winner after a unilateral bid increase. (b) greedy allocation (based on marginal profits): Non-monotone allocation that gives the revenue upper bound — red and blue points enclosed in opposing regions represent monotonicity violations that preclude strategy-proofness. (c) (monotone) interpolation: A tiny neural network mimics the macro-trends of (b) while “glossing over” fine-grained violations due to its limited expressive capacity. This interpolation is formally verified to be monotone, thereby ensuring exact strategy-proofness. (d) revenue fix (leading to final allocation): The result after applying the revenue fix in Section 3 , which determines the exact shape of the “no-sale” (white) region to maximize expected revenue without altering the strategy-proofness established in the previous stage.
Table 2: 3 and 5 bidders: M/2 represents the better between Myerson and 2nd n=3 : \textscGap(\textscMP)=0.36% , \textscGap(\textscRNet)=3.6% , \textscGap(\textsc2nd)=3.9% , \textscGap(\textscMyer)=3.8%n=5 : \textscGap(\textscMP)=0.87% , \textscGap(\textscRNet)=2.8% , \textscGap(\textsc2nd)=2.4% , \textscGap(\textscMyer)=2.4%
Appendix figures & tables15 assets
Supplementary material from the paper’s appendix.
Appendix
Figure 2: Plots for grid distribution [0.2,3.58,0.32,0.05,0.85] . The grid distribution family is formally defined in Section 5 . The example grid distribution here describes a random variable with range [0,1] , which is divided into 5 equally-sized sub-intervals. In [0,51] , the probability density value is uniformly 0.2 . In [51,52] , the probability density value is uniformly 3.58 .
Table 5: Summary of best revenue per category, where 100 trials are divided into 4 categories based on the monotonicity status at the end of stage-one and two: M =Monotonicity; M =non-monotonicity; M→M means the stage-one result is monotone and the stage-two result is not monotone
Figure 3: While green and black reached slightly higher highs, the gap between blue and green/black is statistically insignificant considering the standard errors. In conclusion, counterexample-guided training and monotonicity fix are not needed for this distribution.
Figure 4: Red and green reached higher, so counterexample-guided training and monotonicity fix do help. We do need the whole suite of techniques to reach near-optimal revenue.
Figure 5: Red reached higher, so counterexample-guided training and monotonicity fix do help. We do need the whole suite of techniques to reach near-optimal revenue.
Distrib.
Greedy
MyerNet
MinMax
MyerNet+
MinMax+
Myer.
MP
G50
0.6862
0.5754
0.5135
0.6630
0.6625
0.6695
0.6799
±0.0008
±0.0005
±0.0008
±0.0006
±0.0006
±0.0006
±0.0006
G51
0.6901
0.5746
0.4503
0.6681
0.6670
0.6737
0.6846
±0.0008
±0.0005
±0.0007
±0.0006
±0.0006
±0.0006
±0.0006
G52
0.6838
0.5216
0.5688
0.6642
0.6635
0.6709
0.6783
±0.0008
±0.0006
±0.0006
±0.0006
±0.0006
±0.0006
±0.0006
Appendix
Table 6: Additional experiments for 5 bidders \textscGap(\textscMP)=0.87% , \textscGap(\textscMyer.)=2.4% (note: \textscGap(\textsc2nd) is also 2.4% ) \textscGap(\textscMyerNet+)=3.3% , \textscGap(\textscMyerNet)=19%\textscGap(\textscMinMax+)=3.4% , \textscGap(\textscMinMax)=18%
n=3
n=4
n=5
Distrib.
Greedy
m+1
MP
Greedy
m+1
MP
Greedy
m+1
MP
G50
0.7629
0.7251
0.7624
0.9387
0.8923
0.9360
1.0856
1.0428
1.0757
±0.002
±0.001
±0.001
±0.002
±0.001
±0.001
±0.002
±0.001
±0.001
G51
0.7896
0.7413
0.7901
0.9646
0.9172
0.9608
1.0973
1.0477
1.0844
±0.002
±0.001
±0.001
±0.002
±0.001
±0.001
±0.002
±0.001
±0.001
G52
0.7311
0.6900
0.7311
0.9380
0.8932
0.9319
1.0868
1.0394
1.0755
Appendix
Table 7: Multi-unit auctions with unit demand with 2 items (i.e., m=2 ) m+1 refers to the (m+1)-th price auction with the optimal reserve price, \textscGap(\textscMP)=0.67% , \textscGap(\textscm+1)=5.1%
Distrib.
Greedy
2nd
MP
f(x,y)=2x+y
0.5095±0.001
0.5079±0.0008
0.5094±0.0008
f(x,y)=2x−y+1
0.4518±0.001
0.4469±0.0008
0.4517±0.0008
f(x,y)=sin(x)+cos(y)+2
0.4216±0.001
0.4211±0.0008
0.4215±0.0008
Appendix
Table 8: Experiments on three continuous distributions \textscGap(\textscMP)=0.02% , \textscGap(\textsc2nd)=0.5%
Distrib.
Greedy
2nd
Myer.
MP
Consumer (eBay)
0.5445±0.0006
0.4211±0.0001
0.3568±0.0002
0.5373±0.0006
Financial (Ethereum)
0.3040±0.0007
0.2805±0.0007
0.2598±0.0008
0.3022±0.0007
Electric Market (PJM)
0.2508±0.0005
0.1578±0.0001
0.1575±0.0001
0.2375±0.0004
Appendix
Table 9: Experiments on Distributions Based on Real-World Datasets: \textscGap(\textscMP)=2.0% , \textscGap(\textsc2nd)=22% , \textscGap(\textscMyer.)=30%
Characterizing revenue-optimal auctions for multi-item, multi-bidder settings remains a fundamental open problem, with no known closed-form solution existing beyond restrictive binary-type instances. This has motivated interest in computational approaches to optimal auction design. In this paper, we introduce the first computational framework that directly tackles the dual problem for multi-item, multi-bidder auctions and dominant-strategy incentive compatibility (DSIC), generating certified revenue upper bounds. Our approach parametrizes Lagrange multipliers with a structurally guaranteed strict flow-conservation property using neural networks, enabling efficient optimization over feasible dual solutions via gradient descent. To bridge the gap between discrete computational methods and theoretical guarantees for continuous types, we develop a novel lifting technique that maps dual certificates from coarse discretizations to fine refinements. We prove that lifting gives valid revenue upper bounds for multi-item, multi-bidder auctions with continuous uniform valuations. Furthermore, we give a generalized lifting construction for arbitrary continuous distributions and demonstrate that these lifted duals converge to the revenue of the original continuous problem in the discrete limit. We validate this computational framework for the dual auction design problem by recovering known analytical mechanisms for canonical instances. For multi-item multi-bidder problems, our framework establishes a small gap between the optimal revenue and best-known DSIC mechanisms, providing computational certificates of near-optimality.
Yanchen Jiang, David C. Parkes, Tonghan Wang
Harvard University, USA · College of AI, Tsinghua University, China
Online resource allocation faces two coupled challenges: (1) allocating scarce resources efficiently under uncertain future demand, and (2) ensuring that agents report task valuations and requirements truthfully (strategyproofness). Reinforcement Learning (RL) adapts allocation decisions through experience but does not necessarily ensure strategyproofness. Existing strategyproof RL uses a linear allocation rule, which limits the resource interactions it can represent. Neural mechanism design methods offer greater expressiveness, but provide only approximate incentive guarantees. Against this background, we introduce the first strategyproof deep RL mechanism for online resource allocation. It integrates three novel components: (i) a monotonic neural network that learns nonlinear interactions by construction (higher reported value cannot reduce acceptance, while a longer reported duration or larger resource requirement cannot increase it); (ii) a generalised critical payment: the lowest accepted value, with all other inputs fixed; and (iii) training by either RL or imitation of an existing rule. Together, monotonicity and the critical payment ensure strategyproofness and individual rationality, while the neural rule provides flexibility and imitation improves training efficiency. Empirically, on a four-resource stream with two partner pairs that a linear difference cannot represent, the neural rule achieves 97.8% of an offline welfare upper bound, compared with 93.8% for a linear learner and 89.0% for first-come, first-served, closing 65% and 80% of the remaining optimality gap, respectively. Moreover, imitation reaches 97.5% in only 261 seconds, about 89 times faster than RL.
Fariba Dehghan, Sebastian Stein, Vahid Yazdanpanah +1
Learning to bid in repeated multi-unit auctions with bandit feedback poses a fundamental challenge. Existing methods often rely on rigid explore-then-exploit schedules, assume stationary adversaries, and optimize solely for bidder utility, thereby limiting adaptability and strategic robustness. To address these limitations, we introduce the A3M framework, which integrates adaptive deep reinforcement learning (DRL), explicit adversarial reasoning, and principled multi-objective reward design for online auction strategy optimization. A3M employs an actor-critic DRL backbone to dynamically balance exploration and exploitation, an opponent model for fictitious play against non-stationary adversaries, and a composite reward function to jointly maximize utility, auctioneer revenue, and fairness. We provide the first comprehensive empirical evaluation of this integrated approach against established baselines in both discriminatory and uniform price auctions. Results show that A3M reduces final regret by 30--40% in standard settings, maintains robust performance against adversarial strategy shifts, scales favorably with the number of units K, and enables tunable multi-objective trade-offs. An extensive ablation study confirms the necessity of each core component. Our work establishes A3M as a powerful and flexible framework for learning in complex auction environments.