Market-Based Allocation with Indivisible Bids

We study multi-unit double auctions accepting bids with indivisibility constraints. We propose different price-quote policies and study their influence on the efficiency of market-based allocation. Using a reconfigurable manufacturing scenario where agents trade large quantities of multiple goods, we demonstrate potential benefits of supporting indivisibility constraints in bidding. These benefits are highly sensitive to the form of price quote provided, indicating interesting tradeoffs in communication and allocation efficiency.

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