Computationally Feasible VCG Mechanisms

Approximations by Computationally-Efficient VCG-Based Mechanisms

We consider computationally-efficient incentive-compatible mechanisms that use the VCG payment scheme, and study how well they can approximate the social welfare in auction settings. We obtain a 2-approximation for multi-unit auctions, and show that this is best possible, even though from a purely computational perspective an FPTAS exists. For combinatorial auctions among submodular (or subaddi...

Undominated VCG redistribution mechanisms

Many important problems in multiagent systems can be seen as resource allocation problems. For such problems, the well-known Vickrey-Clarke-Groves (VCG) mechanism is efficient, incentive compatible, individually rational, and does not incur a deficit. However, the VCG mechanism is not (strongly) budget balanced: generally, the agents’ payments will sum to more than 0. Very recently, several mec...

EPIC Mechanisms and VCG

Limits on Computationally Efficient VCG-Based Mechanisms for Combinatorial Auctions and Public Projects

A natural goal in designing mechanisms for auctions and public projects is to maximize the social welfare while incentivizing players to bid truthfully. If these are the only concerns, the problem is easily solved by use of the VCG mechanism. Unfortunately, this mechanism is not computationally efficient in general and there are currently no other general methods for designing truthful mechanis...

GROWRANGE: Anytime VCG-Based Mechanisms

We introduce anytime mechanisms for distributed optimization with self-interested agents. Anytime mechanisms retain good incentive properties even when interrupted before the optimal solution is computed, and provide better quality solutions when given additional time. Anytime mechanisms can solve easy instances of a hard problem quickly and optimally, while providing approximate solutions on v...