scholarly journals A Characterization of Strongly Locally Incentive Compatible Planning Procedures With Public Goods

1983 ◽  
Vol 50 (1) ◽  
pp. 171 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean-Jacques Laffont ◽  
Eric Maskin
Keyword(s):  
Public Goods ◽  
Incentive Compatible

The randomized communication complexity of revenue maximization

2021 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 75-83
Author(s):  
Aviad Rubinstein ◽  
Junyao Zhao
Keyword(s):  
Lower Bounds ◽  
Communication Complexity ◽  
Social Choice Rule ◽  
Valuation Function ◽  
Optimal Auctions ◽  
Incentive Compatible ◽  
First Approximation ◽  
Exponential Separation ◽  
Open Question

We study the communication complexity of incentive compatible auction-protocols between a monopolist seller and a single buyer with a combinatorial valuation function over n items [Rubinstein and Zhao 2021]. Motivated by the fact that revenue-optimal auctions are randomized [Thanassoulis 2004; Manelli and Vincent 2010; Briest et al. 2010; Pavlov 2011; Hart and Reny 2015] (as well as by an open problem of Babaioff, Gonczarowski, and Nisan [Babaioff et al. 2017]), we focus on the randomized communication complexity of this problem (in contrast to most prior work on deterministic communication). We design simple, incentive compatible, and revenue-optimal auction-protocols whose expected communication complexity is much (in fact infinitely) more efficient than their deterministic counterparts. We also give nearly matching lower bounds on the expected communication complexity of approximately-revenue-optimal auctions. These results follow from a simple characterization of incentive compatible auction-protocols that allows us to prove lower bounds against randomized auction-protocols. In particular, our lower bounds give the first approximation-resistant, exponential separation between communication complexity of incentivizing vs implementing a Bayesian incentive compatible social choice rule, settling an open question of Fadel and Segal [Fadel and Segal 2009].

Exploring Recipient Preferences and Allocation Mechanisms in the Distribution of Development Aid

2019 ◽  
Vol 34 (3) ◽  
pp. 749-766
Author(s):  
Jeremy Shapiro
Keyword(s):  
Public Goods ◽  
Poverty Reduction ◽  
Development Aid ◽  
Cash Transfers ◽  
Low Resource ◽  
Perceived Need ◽  
Incentive Compatible ◽  
Private Contributions ◽  
Resource Levels

Abstract This study uses incentive-compatible techniques to obtain valuations of 14 common poverty reduction interventions from (probable) aid recipients. Recipients’ valuations for these interventions are highly heterogeneous both across interventions and across recipients of the same intervention. Valuation for interventions does not correlate with overall poverty or with perceived need for specific interventions, suggesting that targeting individuals with high valuations based on recipient characteristics is difficult. Through simulations, this study assesses how various allocation mechanisms—cash transfers and voting—compare in generating recipient surplus in the allocation of aid. When markets function and constraints on joint private contributions to public goods do not bind, cash transfers generate considerably more recipient surplus than voting. Even when cash transfers cannot enable public goods and some services, they may still outperform voting at very low resource levels. However, as resource levels increase, voting dominates cash transfers from a surplus-maximization perspective.

Efficient Constrained Combinatorial Auctions

2016 ◽  
Vol 18 (03) ◽  
pp. 1650007
Author(s):  
Anat Lerner ◽  
Rica Gonen
Keyword(s):  
Necessary Conditions ◽  
Dominant Strategy ◽  
Single Item ◽  
Constrained Efficiency ◽  
Incentive Compatible ◽  
Sufficient And Necessary Conditions ◽  
Multidimensional Types ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Efficient Mechanisms

The seminal work by Green and Laffont [(1977) characterization of satisfactory mechanisms for the revelation of preferences for public goods, Econometrica 45, 427–438] shows that efficient mechanisms with Vickrey–Clarke–Groves prices satisfy the properties of dominant-strategy incentive compatible (DSIC) and individually rational in the quasilinear utilities model. Nevertheless in many real-world situations some players have a gap between their willingness to pay and their ability to pay, i.e., a budget. We show that once budgets are integrated into the model then Green and Laffont’s theorem ceases to apply. More specifically, we show that even if only a single player has budget constraints then there is no deterministic efficient mechanism that satisfies the individual rationality and DSIC properties. Furthermore, in a quasilinear utilities model with [Formula: see text] nonidentical items and [Formula: see text] players with multidimensional types, we characterize the sufficient and necessary conditions under which Green and Laffont’s theorem holds in the presence of budget-constrained players. Interestingly our characterization is similar in spirit to that of Maskin [(2000) Auctions, development and privatization: Efficient auctions with liquidity-constrained buyers, Eur. Econ. Rev. 44, 667–681] for Bayesian single-item constrained-efficiency auctions.

scholarly journals Exploitation by cheaters facilitates the preservation of essential public goods in microbial communities

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Clara Moreno-Fenoll ◽  
Matteo Cavaliere ◽  
Esteban Martinez-Garcia ◽  
Juan F Poyatos
Keyword(s):  
Public Goods ◽  
Microbial Communities ◽  
Experimental System ◽  
Lag Phase ◽  
The Public ◽  
Common Resource ◽  
The Cost ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Spontaneous Mutants

How are public goods maintained in bacterial cooperative populations? The presence of these compounds is usually threatened by the rise of cheaters that do not contribute but just exploit the common resource. Minimizing cheater invasions appears then as a necessary maintenance mechanism. However, that invasions can instead add to the persistence of cooperation is a prospect that has yet remained largely unexplored. Here, we show that the detrimental consequences of cheaters can actually preserve public goods, at the cost of recurrent collapses and revivals of the population. The result is made possible by the interplay between spatial constraints and the essentiality of the shared resource. We validate this counter-intuitive effect by carefully combining theory and experiment, with the engineering of an explicit synthetic community in which the public compound allows survival to a bactericidal stress. Notably, the characterization of the experimental system identifies additional factors that can matter, like the impact of the lag phase on the tolerance to stress, or the appearance of spontaneous mutants. Our work emphasizes the unanticipated consequences of the eco-evolutionary feedbacks that emerge in microbial communities relying on essential public goods to function, feedbacks that reveal fundamental for the adaptive change of ecosystems at all scales.

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