False-name-proofness with bid withdrawal

We study a more powerful variant of false-name manipulation in Internet auctions: an agent can submit multiple false-name bids, but then, once the allocation and payments have been decided, withdraw some of her false-name identities (have some of her falsename identities refuse to pay). While these withdrawn identities will not obtain the items they won, their initial presence may have been beneficial to the agent’s other identities. We define a mechanism to be false-name-proof with withdrawal (FNPW) if the aforementioned manipulation is never beneficial. FNPW is a stronger condition than false-name-proofness (FNP). We first give a necessary and sufficient condition on the type space for the VCG mechanism to be FNPW. We then characterize both the payment rules and the allocation rules of FNPW mechanisms in general combinatorial auctions. Based on the characterization of the payment rules, we derive a condition that is sufficient for a mechanism to be FNPW. We also propose the maximum marginal value item pricing (MMVIP) mechanism. We show that MMVIP is FNPW and exhibit some of its desirable properties. We then propose an automated mechanism design technique that transforms any feasible mechanism into an FNPW mechanism, and prove some basic properties about this technique. Since FNPW is stronger than FNP, the mechanisms we obtain in this paper are also FNP. Finally, we prove a strict upper bound on the worst-case efficiency ratio of FNPW mechanisms. In the appendix, we give a characterization of FNP(W) social choice rules.