Minitrack Introduction

This minitrack begins with papers on e-mechanism design. R. Vragov, D. Shang, and K. R. Lang contrib- uted "Should Online Auctions Employ Dynamic Buy- out Pricing Models?" They model buy-it-now options and show how the buyout price should change with time to maximize seller profit and buyer surplus, and discuss an experimental approach designed to docu- ment the performance gains. J. Stoesser, P. Boden- benner, S. See, and D. Neumann\´s paper is next, and is entitled "A Discriminatory Pay-as-Bid Mechanism for Efficient Scheduling in the Sun N1 Grid Engine." The authors discuss a discriminatory pay-as-bid market mechanism and show how it outperforms the market- based proportional share approach, a prominent grid market mechanism.