Algorithmic mechanism design considers distributed settings where the participants, termed agents, cannot be assumed to follow the protocol but rather their own interests. The protocol can be regarded as an algorithm augmented with a suitable payment rule and the desired condition is termed truthfulness, meaning that it is never convenient for an agent to report false information. Motivated by ...

A well-known result in incentive theory is that for a very broad class of decision problems, there is no mechanism which achieves truthtelling in dominant strategies, efficiency and budget balancedness (or first best implementability). On the contrary, Mitra and Sen (1998), prove that linear cost queueing models are first best implementable. This paper is an attempt at identification of cost st...

The aim of the ontology alignment problem is to find meaningful correspondences between two ontologies represented as collections of entities. This problem can be modelled as a novel mechanism design problem on an edge-weighted bipartite graph, where each side of the graph holds each agent’s private entities, and the objective is to maximise the agents’ social welfare. Having studied implementa...

Recently network virtualization has been proposed as a promising approach to thwart the current ossification of the Internet by allowing multiple heterogeneous virtual networks (VN) to coexist on a shared infrastructure which itself is controlled by self-interested infrastructure providers. A major challenge in this respect is the VN embedding problem that deals with efficient mapping of virtua...

This note relates the mechanisms that are based on mediated contracts of Rahman and Obara (2010) to the mechanisms of Myerson (1982). It shows that the mechanisms in Myerson (1982) are more general in that they encompass the mechanisms based on mediated contracts. It establishes an equivalence between the two classes if mediated contracts are allowed to be stochastic.

[IMD] Introduction to mechanism design (for computer scientists), by N. Nisan. In N. Nisan, T. Roughgarden, E. Tardos, and V. Vazirani, editors, Algorithmic Game Theory, chapter 9. Cambridge University Press, 2007. [CAs] Combinatorial Auctions, by L. Blumrosen and N. Nisan. In N. Nisan, T. Roughgarden, E. Tardos, and V. Vazirani, editors, Algorithmic Game Theory, chapter 11. Cambridge Universit...

Algorithmic mechanism design deals with efficiently-computable algorithmic constructions in the presence of strategic players who hold the inputs to the problem and may misreport their input if doing so benefits them. Algorithmic mechanism design finds applications in a variety of internet settings such as resource allocation, facility location and e-commerce, such as sponsored search auctions....

Network Extenality and Mechanism Design

This paper focuses on implementation issues in environments where it may be costly for the players to send certain messages. We suggest an approach allowing to characterize the set of implementable outcomes, and then apply it to derive optimal mechanisms in a number of environments. The key elements of our approach are the absence of any restrictions on the communication structure in a mechanis...