> Research

Selected Publications (past 5 years)

Below is a selection of 10 journal papers from the past 5 years.

M. Ahunbay, M. Bichler. On the Uniqueness of Bayesian Coarse Correlated Equilibria in Standard First-Price and All-Pay Auctions. Symposium on Discrete Algorithms (SODA), 2025. (top conference in theoretical computer science)
M. Ahunbay, M. Bichler, and J. Knoerr. Pricing optimal outcomes in coupled and non-convex markets: theory and applications to electricity markets. Operations Research, April 2024. (#1 journal in operations research)
M. Bichler, M. Fichtl, and M. Oberlechner. Computing Bayes-Nash equilibrium strategies in auction games via simultaneous online dual averaging. Operations Research, December 2023. (#1 journal in operations research)
E. Baldwin, M. Bichler, M. Fichtl, and P. Klemperer. Walrasian equilibria in the strong-substitutes product-mix auction. Mathematical Programming, 191(2), 2022. (#1 journal in mathematical optimization)
M. Bichler, P. Gritzmann, P. Karaenke, and M. Ritter. On airport time slot auctions: A market design complying with the IATA scheduling guidelines. Transportation Science, August 2022. (#1 journal in transportation and logistics)
M. Bichler, P. Milgrom, and G. Schwarz. Taming the communication and computation complexity of combinatorial auctions: The FUEL bid language. Management Science, 69(4):2217-2238, June 2022. (#1 journal in management science)
M. Bichler, M. Fichtl, S. Heidekrüger, N. Kohring, and P. Sutterer. Learning equilibria in symmetric auction games using artificial neural networks. Nature Machine Intelligence, 3:687–695, August 2021. (leading journal in machine learning)
M. Bichler and S. Waldherr. Core-pricing in combinatorial exchanges with financially constrained buyers: Computational hardness and algorithmic solutions. Operations Research, 70(1):241-264, November 2021. (#1 journal in operations research)
M. Bichler, T. Morrill, and S. Waldherr. How to assign scarce resources without money: Designing information systems that are efficient, truthful, and (pretty) fair. INFORMS Information Systems Research, 32(2):335–355, 2020. (leading information systems journal)
P. Karaenke, M. Bichler, and S. Minner. Coordination is hard: Electronic auction mechanisms for increased efficiency in transportation logistics. Management Science, 65(12):5449–5956, 2019. (#1 journal in management science)
M. Bichler, V. Fux, and J. Goeree. Designing combinatorial exchanges for the reallocation of resource rights. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), 116(3):786–791, 2018. (leading science journal)

List of key journals, where our research appeared: Nature (Machine Intelligence), Nature (Food), Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), Operations Research, Management Science, INFORMS ISR, Production and Operations Management (POM), Mathematical Programming, Transportation Science, Games and Economic Behavior, INFORMS Journal on Computing, Symposium on Discrete Algorithms, ACM TEAC, IEEE TCC, IEEE TSC, International Journal of Industrial Organization, Energy Economics, Experimental Economics, EJOR, Transportation Research: Part B, Naval Research Logistics, Economics Letters, OR Letters, Telecom Policy, IEEE Computer, CACM, Computer Networks, Distributed and Parallel Databases, and SIGMOD Records.

Research

Martin has contributed to different areas in computer science, operations research, and information systems. In particular he is interested in market design and optimization, econometrics, and data analysis. In recent research Martin's group developed

a bilevel programming method to compute core-stable outcomes on exchanges where buyers have budget constraints.
a method to learn Bayes Nash equilibria in auction games based on Neural Networks and Monte Carlo sampling.
a game-theoretical model showing that auctions might not exhibit efficient equilibria if we assume principal-agent relationships within bidding firms.
strategies to game the combinatorial clock auction, which is widely used in spectrum sales by regulators.
randomized approximation mechanisms which are truthful in expectation and applications in logictics.
integer programming techniques for very high-dimensional bin-packing problems (as in cloud computing).
algorithms to compute prices on non-convex markets (relevant to energy-markets, procurement, or environmental markets).

Press Coverage

Interview on the Bidding Zone Review by the European Commission (Bayerischer Rundfunk, 14.10.24)
Article on local prices on the power market in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) (10.07.2024, Nr. 158, S. 20) together with 11 energy economists.
Press release (BMBF project SynErgie) on the bidding zone review and nodal pricing in the day-ahead electricity market (June 27, 2024).
Op-ed on electricity market design and German price zones in the Tagesspiegel (June 2, 2023).
TUM press release on our equlibrium learning method published in Nature Machine Intelligence (September 10, 2021). See also an article on techexplore .
OR News article (in German) discussing the contributions of Nobel laureates Paul Milgrom and Bob Wilson.
Several papers mentioned in the writeup by the Nobel Prize Committee on the scientific background of the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences 2020.
Commentary on the sale of airport time slots together with Cramton, Gritzmann, and Ockenfels in the FAZ (December 20, 2020) and in VoxEU (January 15, 2021).
Commentary on the German spectrum auction in 2019 in Wirtschaftswoche (April 18, 2019).

Recent Books

M. Bichler and J. Goeree. Handbook of Spectrum Auction Design, Cambridge University Press, 2017.
M. Bichler. Market Design: A Linear Programming Approach to Auctions and Matching, Cambridge University Press, 2017.

Research Transfer and Policy Advice

He has been involved in the development of several software packages, which have been or are being used in industry practice. He has also been a consultant to policy makers and industry in different areas in the recent years:

Policy advice on the design of airport time slot auctions with the UK regulator.
Policy advice on electricity market design in the context of the Kopernikus projects. Member of the ENTSOe Bid Zone Review consultative group tasked by the European Commission.
Game-theoretical consulting on spectrum auctions for bidders and regulators in almost a dozen auctions in countries such as Australia, Austria, Canada, the Czech Republic, and Germany. Professor Bichler's provided policy advice to the Austrian, the Australian, and the Canadian regulator, and his academic work was cited by the US Federal Communications Commission. He was co-editing the Handbook of Spectrum Auction Design with Cambridge University Press. Several publications were cited in the scientific background to the Nobel Prize 2020 to Milgrom and Wilson. The collaboration with Paul Milgrom was mentioned in his award speech for the Nobel prize 2020.
Design of environmental markets: Implementation of a large scale combinatorial exchange for the trading of catch shares in Australia in 2017 (see article in PNAS). The project won the EURO Excellence in Practice Award 2018 and the ISS Design Science Award.
Design of procurement auctions with industry partners such for direct and indirect materials. One of his projects won the Siemens SCM Olympics. A spin-off was providing services to procurement organizations for 10 years before it was sold.
Development of prediction and bidding agents for display ad auctions with a large German software vendor.
Development of (patented) algorithms and tools for server consolidation and resource allocation in virtualized data centers with a European IT service provider. Implementation of control algorithms for virtualized data centers of a multi-national Asian IT service provider.
Earlier contributions to open-source software projects such as the Prova rule engine or the Permoto performance modeling tool.

Recent Community Service

CLUSTER CHAIR, IFORS, Cluster on Game Theory, Market Design and Math. Economics, Vienna, Austria, 2026.
SENIOR PROG. COMMITTEE, ACM Economics and Computation, Stanford, CA, USA, 2025.
CO-ORGANIZER, Dagstuhl Seminar on Dealing with Complexities in Auction and Matching Market Design, Germany, 2025.
CO-EDITOR, Mathematics of Operations Research Special Issue on Market Design, 2024.
ORGANIZING COMMITTEE, Operations Research, Munich, Germany, 2024.
CO-EDITOR, INFORMS Journal on Computing Special Issue on AI for the Social Good, 2023
PROG. COMMITTEE, Conference on Mechanism and Institution Design, Budapest, Hungary, 2024.
PROG. COMMITTEE, ACM Economics and Computation, New Haven, USA, 2024.
SCIENTIFIC COMMITTEE, Games and Artificial Intelligence Summer School, Metz, France, 2024.
WORKSHOP CHAIR, SLMath "Algorithms, Approximation, and Learning in Market and Mechanism Design", Berkeley, USA, 2023.
AREA CHAIR, ACM Economics and Computation, London, UK, 2023.
CLUSTER CHAIR, IFORS Meeting, Santiago, Chile, 2023.
AREA CHAIR, ACM Economics and Computation, Boulder, Colorado, USA, 2022.
TRACK CO-CHAIR, Wirtschaftsinformatik 22, Nuernberg, Germany, 2022, 2023.
WORKSHOP CO-CHAIR, INFORMS Market Design Workshop, Budapest, Hungary, 2021.
CLUSTER CHAIR, INFORMS Annual Meeting, Washington DC, USA, 2020, 2021.
ASSOCIATE EDITOR, International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS), India, 2020.
SENIOR PROGRAM COMMITTEE MEMBER, ACM Conference on Economics and Computation, Phoenix, USA, 2019.
CO-CHAIR, Workshop on Information Technology and Systems, Munich, 2019.
CO-CHAIR, Doctoral Consortium, International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS), Munich, Germany, 2019.
PC MEMBER, ACM Conference on Economics and Computation, Ithaca, NY, 2018.
FACULTY MENTOR, Doctoral Consortium, International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS), San Francisclo, USA, 2018.
TRACK CHAIR, International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS), Seoul, Korea, 2017.
SENIOR PROGRAM COMMITTEE MEMBER, ACM Conference on Economics and Computation, Netherlands, 2016.
STREAM CHAIR, International Conference on Operations Research, Aachen, Germany, 2014.
TRACK CHAIR, International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS), Milan, Italy, 2013.
FACULTY MENTOR, Doctoral Consortium, International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS), Milan, Italy, 2013.
PROGRAM COMMITTEE CHAIR, International Conference on Electronic Commerce (ICEC), Singapore, 2012.
CLUSTER CHAIR, for the Auction Cluster of the INFORMS Annual Meeting, Charlotte, NC, USA, 2011.