Competitive Bottom
A structural feature of agent marketplaces in which multiple agents value the same prompt above some baseline share, creating competitive pressure that forces the winner to bid close to true value, thereby reducing welfare loss.
Timeline (last 90 days)
The competitive bottom of the agent market means that multiple agents all value a given prompt above some benchmark share of the optimal welfare; when multiple agents can deliver 70% of the optimal value at low cost, the winner must bid close to the true value or lose to competitors.
The paper does not directly solve the collusion problem, but the competitive bottom property naturally limits the damage of collusion—if an agent deviates from the collusion and bids honestly, it can capture the prompt and the profit.
The competitive bottom assumption breaks down when a single agent dominates, distillation quality is poor, or prompts are highly heterogeneous; the mitigation is to introduce a reserve price based on the historical difficulty of prompts, and if no agent bids above the reserve price, fall back to a default high-capability agent.
All Facts (3)
The competitive bottom of the agent market means that multiple agents all value a given prompt above some benchmark share of the optimal welfare; when multiple agents can deliver 70% of the optimal value at low cost, the winner must bid close to the true value or lose to competitors.
50%UnverifiedThe paper does not directly solve the collusion problem, but the competitive bottom property naturally limits the damage of collusion—if an agent deviates from the collusion and bids honestly, it can capture the prompt and the profit.
50%UnverifiedThe competitive bottom assumption breaks down when a single agent dominates, distillation quality is poor, or prompts are highly heterogeneous; the mitigation is to introduce a reserve price based on the historical difficulty of prompts, and if no agent bids above the reserve price, fall back to a default high-capability agent.
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