Central Concerns and Questions

We look at problems that cannot be solved centrally due to the decentralisation of information or control. To cope with the decentralised problem structures, market mechanisms such as auctions are proposed as coordination protocols, and in most cases, game theory forms the foundation of our theoretical analysis.

Emerging Ideas and Initiatives

We extend classical auction mechanisms in various ways. For example, in recurring e-Procurement auctions, we investigate the use of bidding history to preserve relationships with bidders. In distributed scheduling, we investigate how to devise auctions that naturally hedge against uncertainty. We are also interested in computational efficiency issues, such as speeding up convergence to equibrium through the use of information.

Selected Publications

[1] H. C. Lau, Z. Zhao, S. Ge and T. H. Lee. Utility Pricing Auction for Multi-period Resource Allocation in Multi-Machine Flow Shop Problems. International Conf. on Electronic Commerce (ICEC), 2008. To appear.

[2] J. H. Park, J. K. Lee and H. C. Lau. Lee. Relationship-Preserving E-Procurement Auction. International Conf. on Electronic Commerce (ICEC), 2008. To appear.

[3] H. C. Lau, K. W. Lye, V. B. Nguyen. A Combinatorial Auction Framework for Solving Decentralized Scheduling Problems. In Fifth International Conference on Integration of AI and OR Techniques in Constraint Programming for Combinatorial Optimization Problems (CPAIOR), Paris, France, 2008.

[4] H. C. Lau, S.-F. Cheng, T. Y. Leong, J. H. Park, and Z. Zhao. Multi-period combinatorial auction mechanism for distributed resource allocation and scheduling. In IEEE/WIC/ACM International Conference on Intelligent Agent Technology (IAT) , San Jose, USA, 2007.

[5] L. Agussurja and H. C. Lau. The price of stability in selfish scheduling games. In IEEE/WIC/ACM International Conference on Intelligent Agent Technology (IAT), San Jose, USA, 2007.

[6] S.-F. Cheng. Designing the market game for a commodity trading simulation. In IEEE/WIC/ACM International Conference on Intelligent Agent Technology (IAT), San Hose, USA, 2007.

[7] S.-F. Cheng and M. P. Wellman. Iterated weaker-than-weak dominance. In Twentieth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, 1233-1238, 2007.

[8] S.-F. Cheng, M. P. Wellman, and D. G. Perry. Market-based resource allocation for information-collection scenarios. In K. Kurumatani, S.-H. Chen, and A. Ohuchi, editors, Multiagent for Mass User Support (MAMUS-03), LNAI 3012, 33-47. Springer-Verlag, 2004.

Projects, Presentations and Posters

1. CHENG Shih-Fen, An Event-Driven Commodity Trading Simulation (poster)
2. CHENG Shih-Fen, Designing Market Game for Global Commodity Supply Chain (presentation)
3. CHENG Shih-Fen, Designing Market Game for Grid Resource Allocation (presentation)

Collaborations and Industry Linkages

1. PSA
2. International Trading Institute at SMU