Manipulation And Implementation Of Resource Allocation Mechanisms

Author : Siwei Chen
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 118 pages
Book Rating : 4.:/5 (923 download)

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Download or read book Essays on Resource Allocation and Mechanism Design written by Siwei Chen and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page 118 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This thesis is a collection of essays on resource allocation and mechanism design problems. The general approach used here is that we first formulate desirable properties on allocation rules or mechanisms, and then identify the ones satisfying these properties. In Chapter 1, we study the problem of ranking users based on feedback information. One real-life example is online marketplace feedback systems, like eBay, Amazon, and Taobao. We formulate requirements of ranking rules based on several general principles: fairness, monotonicity, robustness, immunity to strategic manipulation, and consistency. We introduce the 'eBay rule' widely used in practice. We also propose new rules. Given three different formulations of immunity to strategic manipulation, we first show that no rule is minimally fair, and satisfies the strong version. The eBay rule satisfies a weaker version. Our second main result is a characterization of the eBay rule, based on this requirement. We also provide two characterizations of our new rules, the 'lexicographic rules', which are possible alternatives to the eBay rule. These results reveal a trade-off between immunity to manipulation and responsiveness to information. In Chapter 2, we study claims problems with indivisible goods. Due to indivisibilities, in certain situations, two agents with equal claims may have to receive unequal amounts. There are often good reasons to favor some groups of agents, for example seniors, low-income families, and people with disabilities. Our main goal is to find rules that do so consistently. We propose three new properties of 'systematic favorability'. We define a subfamily of up (down) rules in Moulin and Stong (2002), and show that the subfamily, called agent-oriented up rules, are the only rules satisfying systematic favorability with respect to awards, composition up, and bilateral consistency. We also characterize the family of sequential priority rules, imposing strong systematic favorability with respect to full compensation and composition down. Besides, we provide a new characterization of the family of claim-oriented up rules studied in Herrero and Martinez (2008). In Chapter 3, we study the problem of allocating objects among people, which is initiated by Hylland and Zeckhauser (1979). For various reasons, it often happens that more objects, sometimes fewer objects are available than initially planned and allocated. There might be several equally reasonable perspectives that can be taken to handle such changes. Yet, outcomes may differ. A natural robustness principle on a rule is that it should produce the same outcome no matter which perspective is taken. We define two robustness properties based on this idea, pertaining to more tasks and fewer tasks, respectively. We identify the sequential priority rules as the only rules that are non-wasteful, neutral, strategy-proof, and non-bossy, and satisfy either one of our robustness properties"--Pages v-vi.