Efficient Online Mechanisms for Persistent, Periodically Inaccessible Self-Interested Agents

We consider the problem of implementing a system-optimal decision policy in the context of self-interested agents with private state in an uncertain world. Unique to our model is that we allow both persistent agents, with an agent having a local MDP model to describe how its local world evolves given actions by a center, and also periodically-inaccessible agents, with an agent unable to report information while inaccessible. We first review the dynamic-VCG mechanism of Bergemann and Välimäki (2006), which handles persistent agents. We offer an independent, simple proof of its correctness. We propose a generalized mechanism to allow also for inaccessibility, and identify conditions for its correctness. In closing, we observe that the mechanism is equivalent to the earlier online-VCG mechanism of Parkes and Singh (2003) in a restricted setting.