Sharing with Frictions: Limited Transfers and Costly Inspections

Fuente: arXiv
Salvato in:
Dettagli Bibliografici
Autori principali: Bobbio, Federico, Berry, Randall A., Honig, Michael L., Nguyen, Thanh, Subramanian, Vijay G., Vohra, Rakesh V.
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2025
Soggetti:
Accesso online:
Tags: Aggiungi Tag
Nessun Tag, puoi essere il primo ad aggiungerne!!
_version_ 1866908732003188736
author Bobbio, Federico
Berry, Randall A.
Honig, Michael L.
Nguyen, Thanh
Subramanian, Vijay G.
Vohra, Rakesh V.
author_facet Bobbio, Federico
Berry, Randall A.
Honig, Michael L.
Nguyen, Thanh
Subramanian, Vijay G.
Vohra, Rakesh V.
contents The radio spectrum suitable for commercial wireless services is limited. A portion of the radio spectrum has been reserved for institutions using it for non-commercial purposes such as federal agencies, defense, public safety bodies and scientific institutions. In order to operate efficiently, these incumbents need clean spectrum access. However, commercial users also want access, and granting them access may materially interfere with the existing activity of the incumbents. Conventional market based mechanisms for allocating scarce resources in this context are problematic. Allowing direct monetary transfers to and from public or scientific institutions risks distorting their non-commercial mission. Moreover, often only the incumbent knows the exact value of the interference it experiences, and, likewise, only commercial users can predict accurately the expected monetary outcome from sharing the resource. Thus, our problem is to determine the efficient allocation of resources in the presence of private information without the use of direct monetary transfers. The problem is not unique to spectrum. Other resources that governments hold in trust share the same feature. We propose a novel mechanism design formulation of the problem, characterize the optimal mechanism and describe some of its qualitative properties.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2512_21793
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Sharing with Frictions: Limited Transfers and Costly Inspections
Bobbio, Federico
Berry, Randall A.
Honig, Michael L.
Nguyen, Thanh
Subramanian, Vijay G.
Vohra, Rakesh V.
Theoretical Economics
Computer Science and Game Theory
Optimization and Control
The radio spectrum suitable for commercial wireless services is limited. A portion of the radio spectrum has been reserved for institutions using it for non-commercial purposes such as federal agencies, defense, public safety bodies and scientific institutions. In order to operate efficiently, these incumbents need clean spectrum access. However, commercial users also want access, and granting them access may materially interfere with the existing activity of the incumbents. Conventional market based mechanisms for allocating scarce resources in this context are problematic. Allowing direct monetary transfers to and from public or scientific institutions risks distorting their non-commercial mission. Moreover, often only the incumbent knows the exact value of the interference it experiences, and, likewise, only commercial users can predict accurately the expected monetary outcome from sharing the resource. Thus, our problem is to determine the efficient allocation of resources in the presence of private information without the use of direct monetary transfers. The problem is not unique to spectrum. Other resources that governments hold in trust share the same feature. We propose a novel mechanism design formulation of the problem, characterize the optimal mechanism and describe some of its qualitative properties.
title Sharing with Frictions: Limited Transfers and Costly Inspections
topic Theoretical Economics
Computer Science and Game Theory
Optimization and Control
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.21793