@InProceedings{conen01a,
  author =	 {Wolfram Conen and Tuomas Sandholm},
  title =	 {Preference elicitation in combinatorial auctions},
  booktitle =	 {Proceedings of the Third ACM conference on
                  Electronic Commerce},
  year =	 2001,
  isbn =	 {1-58113-387-1},
  pages =	 {256--259},
  location =	 {Tampa, Florida, USA},
  doi =		 {10.1145/501158.501191},
  publisher =	 {ACM Press},
  address =	 {New York, NY, USA},
  abstract =	 {Combinatorial auctions (CAs) where bidders can bid
                  on bundles of items can be very desirable market
                  mechanisms when the items sold exhibit
                  complementarity and/or substitutability, so the
                  bidder's valuations for bundles are not
                  additive. However, in a basic CA, the bidders may
                  need to bid on exponentially many bundles, leading
                  to difficulties in determining those valuations,
                  undesirable information revelation, and unnecessary
                  communication. In this paper we present a design of
                  an auctioneer agent that uses topological structure
                  inherent in the problem to reduce the amount of
                  information that it needs from the bidders. An
                  analysis tool is presented as well as data
                  structures for storing and optimally assimilating
                  the information received from the bidders. Using
                  this information, the agent then narrows down the
                  set of desirable (welfare-maximizing or
                  Pareto-efficient) allocations, and decides which
                  questions to ask next. Several algorithms are
                  presented that ask the bidders for value, order, and
                  rank information. A method is presented for making
                  the elicitor incentive compatible.},
  keywords = 	 {auctions},
  url = 	 {http://jmvidal.cse.sc.edu/library/conen01a.pdf},
}