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arXiv · 2307.11967

Nonbossy Mechanisms: Mechanism Design Robust to Secondary Goals

Renato Paes Leme·Jon Schneider·Hanrui Zhang
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Abstract

We study mechanism design when agents may have hidden secondary goals which will play a role when the primary utility of the outcomes is the same. We show that in such cases, a mechanism is immune to strategic manipulation if and only if it is incentive compatible with regard to primary utility -- a property we term "primary incentive compatibility" -- and nonbossy -- a well-studied property in the context of matching and allocation mechanisms. We give complete characterizations of primarily incentive-compatible and nonbossy mechanisms in various settings, including auctions with single-parameter agents and public decision settings where all agents share a common outcome. In particular, we show that in the single-item setting, a mechanism is primarily incentive compatible, individually rational, and nonbossy if and only if it is a sequential posted-price mechanism.

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Renato Paes Leme, Jon Schneider, Hanrui Zhang. 2023-07-22. Nonbossy Mechanisms: Mechanism Design Robust to Secondary Goals. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jet.2026.106187

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