document: A probabilistic approach to automated bidding in alternative auctions This paper presents an approach to develop bidding agents that participate in multiple alternative auctions , with the goal of obtaining an item at the lowest price . The approach consists of a prediction method and a planning algorithm . The prediction method exploits the history of past auctions in order to build probability functions capturing the belief that a bid of a given price may win a given auction . The planning algorithm computes the lowest price , such that by sequentially bidding in a subset of the relevant auctions , the agent can obtain the item at that price with an acceptable probability . The approach addresses the case where the auctions are for substitutable items with different values . Experimental results are reported , showing that the approach increases the payoff of their users and the welfare of the market .
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