MIT Center for e-Business: “Optimal Bidding in Online Auctions”. Dmitri Bertsimas (who taught my class on data mining), Jeffrey Hawkins and Georgia Perakis investigate published data on eBay auctions to identify optimal strategies for winning auctions–both one at a time and multiple auctions. They identify some winning strategies using dynamic programming algorithms.
Now, all I need is a way to implement the strategies so I can finally replace the busted DVD drive on my laptop…