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Main Authors: Heo, Eun Jeong, Manjunath, Vikram, Alva, Samson
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2401.11899
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author Heo, Eun Jeong
Manjunath, Vikram
Alva, Samson
author_facet Heo, Eun Jeong
Manjunath, Vikram
Alva, Samson
contents 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.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2401_11899
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Unambiguous Efficiency of Random Allocations
Heo, Eun Jeong
Manjunath, Vikram
Alva, Samson
Theoretical Economics
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.
title Unambiguous Efficiency of Random Allocations
topic Theoretical Economics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2401.11899