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Main Authors: Schmidt-Kraepelin, Ulrike, Suksompong, Warut, Utke, Markus
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.05708
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author Schmidt-Kraepelin, Ulrike
Suksompong, Warut
Utke, Markus
author_facet Schmidt-Kraepelin, Ulrike
Suksompong, Warut
Utke, Markus
contents We study a budget aggregation setting where voters express their preferred allocation of a fixed budget over a set of alternatives, and a mechanism aggregates these preferences into a single output allocation. Motivated by scenarios in which the budget is not perfectly divisible, we depart from the prevailing literature by restricting the mechanism to output allocations that assign integral amounts. This seemingly minor deviation has significant implications for the existence of truthful mechanisms. Specifically, when voters can propose fractional allocations, we demonstrate that the Gibbard-Satterthwaite theorem can be extended to our setting. In contrast, when voters are restricted to integral ballots, we identify a class of truthful mechanisms by adapting moving-phantom mechanisms to our context. Moreover, we show that while a weak form of proportionality can be achieved alongside truthfulness, (stronger) proportionality notions derived from approval-based committee voting are incompatible with truthfulness.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2505_05708
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Discrete Budget Aggregation: Truthfulness and Proportionality
Schmidt-Kraepelin, Ulrike
Suksompong, Warut
Utke, Markus
Computer Science and Game Theory
Theoretical Economics
We study a budget aggregation setting where voters express their preferred allocation of a fixed budget over a set of alternatives, and a mechanism aggregates these preferences into a single output allocation. Motivated by scenarios in which the budget is not perfectly divisible, we depart from the prevailing literature by restricting the mechanism to output allocations that assign integral amounts. This seemingly minor deviation has significant implications for the existence of truthful mechanisms. Specifically, when voters can propose fractional allocations, we demonstrate that the Gibbard-Satterthwaite theorem can be extended to our setting. In contrast, when voters are restricted to integral ballots, we identify a class of truthful mechanisms by adapting moving-phantom mechanisms to our context. Moreover, we show that while a weak form of proportionality can be achieved alongside truthfulness, (stronger) proportionality notions derived from approval-based committee voting are incompatible with truthfulness.
title Discrete Budget Aggregation: Truthfulness and Proportionality
topic Computer Science and Game Theory
Theoretical Economics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.05708