# Descending Price Optimally Coordinates Search

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/1603.07682 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/1603.07682/

## Key facts

- Cited by 8 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 24 Mar 2016.

## Built on by (most cited first, 8 of 8)

- [Cost-aware Bayesian Optimization via the Pandora's Box Gittins Index](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.20062/) (2024)
- [Bandit Algorithms for Prophet Inequality and Pandora's Box](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.08586/) (2022)
- [Semi-Bandit Learning for Monotone Stochastic Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.15427/) (2023)
- [The Gittins Index: A Design Principle for Decision-Making Under Uncertainty](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.10872/) (2025)
- [Cost-aware Stopping for Bayesian Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.12453/) (2025)
- [Exploration and Persuasion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.17086/) (2024)
- [T-TAMER: Provably Taming Trade-offs in ML Serving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.22992/) (2025)
- [Statistical Guarantees in the Search for Less Discriminatory Algorithms](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.23943/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Investigating potential purchases is often a substantial investment under uncertainty. Standard market designs, such as simultaneous or English auctions, compound this with uncertainty about the price a bidder will have to pay in order to win. As a result they tend to confuse the process of search both by leading to wasteful information acquisition on goods that have already found a good purchaser and by discouraging needed investigations of objects, potentially eliminating all gains from trade. In contrast, we show that the Dutch auction preserves all of its properties from a standard setting without information costs because it guarantees, at the time of information acquisition, a price at which the good can be purchased. Calibrations to start-up acquisition and timber auctions suggest that in practice the social losses through poor search coordination in standard formats are an order of magnitude or two larger than the (negligible) inefficiencies arising from ex-ante bidder asymmetries.