Search arXiv⌕ Search

arXiv · 2609.18701

Comparison of Deterministic Information Providers

Abstract

We analyze incomplete-information games where an oracle publicly shares information with players. One oracle dominates another if, in every game, it can match the set of equilibrium outcomes induced by the latter. Characterizations are provided for deterministic signaling functions, based on simultaneous posterior matching, a constructive partition criterion, and common knowledge components. This study elaborates on the work of Blackwell (1951) in games with incomplete information, using the common knowledge components of Aumann (1976).

Explore related subjects

Keep this discovery

Explore connections, maps & timelines

BibTeXRIS

David Lagziel, Ehud Lehrer, Tao Wang. 2026-09-16. Comparison of Deterministic Information Providers. https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.18701

Cite the original work for its findings. Save a collection to share your selection of sources.

KEEP EXPLORING

Related papers

Affirmative Action's Cumulative Fractional Assignments

India's reservation policy entitles designated groups to fixed fractions of faculty positions. Positions are indivisible, arrive over time across departments, and appointments are irreversible. We show that no rule can keep cumulative reserved counts nondecreasing while rounding entitlements to adjacent integers at both the department and university levels; university-level compliance forces department-level errors that grow without bound. This impossibility explains why both solutions practiced in India provoked litigation and protests. A random-roster solution preserves irreversibility and department-level compliance, matches entitlements in expectation, and concentrates university-level errors. Dropping cumulative accounting restores exact rounding at both levels.

econ.TH↗

Crowdsearch

A common economic process is crowdsearch, wherein a group of agents is invited to search for a valuable object, such as a software vulnerability or a proof-of-work nonce. We study a binary model of crowdsearch in which agents with heterogeneous search costs decide whether or not to search. Inviting more agents directly expands the pool of potential searchers, but it also increases competition for the prize and lowers individual search incentives. This crowding-out effect may dominate, so that inviting more agents can lower the probability of finding the object. We show that inviting an unlimited crowd need not guarantee success. We also provide sufficient conditions, based on the lower-tail behavior of the cost distribution, under which the probability of success is eventually increasing or eventually decreasing in the number of agents.

econ.TH↗

Unambiguous Efficiency of Random Allocations

When allocating indivisible objects via lottery, planners often use ordinal mechanisms, which elicit agents' rankings of objects rather than their full preferences over lotteries. In such an ordinal informational environment, planners cannot differentiate between utility profiles that induce the same ranking of objects. We propose the criterion of unambiguous efficiency: regardless of how each agent extends their preferences over objects to lotteries, the allocation is Pareto efficient with respect to the extended preferences. We compare this with the predominant efficiency criterion used for ordinal mechanisms. As an application to mechanism design, we characterize all efficient and strategy-proof mechanisms satisfying certain regularity conditions.

econ.TH↗