Antisocial Agents and Vickrey Auctions

In recent years auctions have become more and more important in the field of multiagent systems as useful mechanisms for resource allocation and task assignment. In many cases the Vickrey (second-price sealed-bid) auction is used as a protocol that prescribes how the individual agents have to interact in order to come to an agreement. We show that the Vickrey auction, despite its theoretical benefits, is inappropriate if “antisocial” agents participate in the auction process. More specifically, an antisocial attitude for economic agents that makes reducing the profit of competitors their main goal besides maximizing their own profit is introduced. Under this novel condition, agents need to deviate from the dominant truth-telling strategy. This paper presents a strategy for bidders in repeated Vickrey auctions who are intending to inflict losses to fellow agents in order to be more successful, not in absolute measures, but relatively to the group of bidders. The strategy is evaluated in a simple task allocation scenario.