网上拍卖品数量的优化

A study of the optimal quantity of items for internet-based auctions

以Onsale网上拍卖公司的拍卖方式为背景,研究了在给定拍卖时间长度与拍卖总供给量的条件下,将拍卖品若干批拍卖这一问题.建立了其马尔可夫决策过程模型,研究了每批拍卖品数量的最优问题,所得到的最优期望利润高于原有结果.

Based on the auction formalism in Onsale, Inc., an Internetbased auction house, we study the following optimization problem: here a given total number of items should be sold in a given time horizon, which is divided into several time periods and at each period there is an auction to sold the items offered optimally. The remaining items at each period can be sold at the next period until the time horizon is ended. It is formulated as a Markov decision process and its optimality equation is solved numerically. It is shown that the expected total profit is superior to the original one.