AstonCAT-Plus: An Efficient Specialist for the TAC Market Design Tournament

Gjerstad and Dickhaut, 1998; Nicolaisen et al., 2001] and a market selection strategy which is mainly based on the history This paper describes the strategies used by of the trader's profit made with each specialist. AstonCAT-Plus, the post-tournament version of A CAT game lasts a number of days (500 days in CATthe specialist designed for the TAC Market Design 2010). Each day consists of a number of trading rounds, Tournament 2010. It details how AstonCATwhich each lasts for a known constant length of time. The Plus accepts shouts, clears market, sets transaction daily evaluation of the specialists is based on three metrics: prices and charges fees. Through empirical evaluation, (1) market share, which is the percentage of the total traders' we show that AstonCAT-Plus not only outperforms population registered in the market; (2) profit share, which is AstonCAT (tournament version) significantly the ratio of the daily profit a specialist obtains to the profit of but also achieves the second best overall all specialists and (3) transaction success rate (TSR), which score against some top entrants of the competition.