Research on algorithm design and analysis related to fixed-price mechanisms in bilateral trade

Introduction

This project studies social welfare maximization in bilateral trade. The model comprises one seller, one buyer, and one indivisible item. As research shows that no truthful mechanisms can be socially efficient, there has been extensive work on approximating the optimal social welfare. In this project, our work is close to two recent studies that give the best-known approximation ratio using Fixed-Price Mechanisms. We follow their analysis and use more efficient and accurate programs for the problem, and also make improvement in the analysis of discretization error.