Resources are the most visible of the factors that critically determine the level of success of any organization. In today’s hyper-charged economy, allocating scarce resources has stakes exceeding $100 billion.

Advertising is ... based on allocating attention, one of the scarcest and most valuable of resources. Media companies capture attention by providing information or entertainment ... and typically sell a fraction of that attention to advertisers. [...] Web search engines such as Google and Yahoo! have led the way, selling space beside particular search queries in continuous dynamic auctions worth billions of dollars annually [1].

Online auctions allow companies and bidders to conduct their trade across the globe, disregarding geography, time, and space.

In this paper, Juda and Parkes develop a “method for resolving the ... difficulties faced by buyers in [large-scale] uncoordinated electronic marketplaces.” The solution involves requiring the buyers to submit their bids to mandatory bidding proxy agents. The proxy agents, in turn, “bid for options on goods and exercise options to maximize buyer utility.” The role of the proxy agent is to render stability and faithfulness to the bidding. The authors back every stage of the modeling rigorously, with theorems, proofs, and thorough analysis.

This paper is bound to become key to researchers in the areas of auctioning, proxy agents, and options.