Ex-Post Equilibrium and VCG Mechanisms

A Ex-Post Equilibrium and VCG Mechanisms

Consider an abstract social choice setting with incomplete information, where the number of alternatives is large. Albeit natural, implementing VCG mechanisms is infeasible due to the prohibitive communication constraints. However, if players restrict attention to a subset of the alternatives, feasibility may be recovered. This paper characterizes the class of subsets which induce an ex-post eq...

Characterization of ex post equilibrium in the VCG combinatorial auctions

We prove that when the number of (potential) buyers is at least three, every ex post equilibrium in the Vickrey-Clarke-Groves combinatorial auction mechanisms is a bundling equilibrium and is symmetric. This complements a theorem proved in Holzman, Kfir-Dahav, Monderer, and Tennenholtz [6], according to which, the symmetric bundling equilibria are precisely those defined by a quasi field.

EPIC Mechanisms and VCG

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...

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...