Double auction in two-level markets

Abstract

In the general discussion of double auction, three properties are mainly considered: incentive compatibility, budget balance, and economic efficiency. In this paper, we introduce another property of double auction: semi-independence, from which we are trying to reveal the essential relation between incentive compatibility and economic efficiency. Babaioff and Nisan [1] studied supply chain of markets and corresponding protocols that solve the transaction and price issues in markets chain. In the second part of the paper, we extend their model to two-level markets, in which all markets in the supply chain are independent and controlled by different owners. Beyond this basic markets chain, there is a communication network (among all owners and another global manager) that instructs the transaction and price issues of the basic markets. Then we discuss incentive compatible problems of owners in the middle level of the markets in terms of semi-independence. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2003.