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Respond to the question: Which auction model is appropriate for m?

05/03/2011 01:54 PM by name withheld; Which auction model is appropriate for my problem?
Hi,
my apologies if my problem is a no-brainer, I am very new to auction theory and appreciate any pointers in the right directions e.g. in the scientific literature.

I am looking for an appropriate auction model where a sold good consists of equal-sized, discrete units which may be sold in multiples to bidders. Since this problem description is most probably too vague I hope I can make myself more clear with the following example:

There is one seller (S). Seller has 50 kilograms (kg) of rice and wants to sell all the rice. He sells in kilogram units, so a buyer may buy e.g. 1kg oder 3kg but not 3.5kg. The minimum price announced by the seller for 1kg of rice is 1$. Now, multiple bidders compete for buying the rice until either the auction is closed by the seller or there are no more bids placed by the buyers. It is safe to assume that demand of the bidders exceeds the available amount of rice. So bidder b1 may want 5kg, bidder b2 requires 10kg, b3 wants 45kg, etc.

The goal of the seller is to sell as many units of rice as possible (maximum 50) and to maximize revenue.
The goal of the buyers is to get as much of the required rice as possible (a maximum need specified by each buyer) for the lowest possible price. Buyers may be satisfied with a subset of the required amount if buying the remaining amount of rice would be too costly for them. For that each buyer has a secret maximum budget to buy rice.

Would anyone please point me in the right direction on which auction models may be appropriate? Are multi-unit auctions the right thing to look into?

Many thanks in advance [Manage messages]