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Published online 30 July 2003 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news030728-4

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Auctions made more efficient

New kind of auction balances supply, demand and complex bidding strategies.

A new way of conducting auctions could make them very efficient at matching buyers to goods, and enable buyers to use more complex bidding strategies.

Called the combinatorial auction, the method allocated goods to buyers with 99% accuracy in 25 different small-scale trials, report developers David Porter of George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia1.

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