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31
Distributed Algorithmic Mechanism Design: Recent Results and Future Directions
, 2002
"... Distributed Algorithmic Mechanism Design (DAMD) combines theoretical computer science’s traditional focus on computational tractability with its more recent interest in incentive compatibility and distributed computing. The Internet’s decentralized nature, in which distributed computation and autono ..."
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Cited by 283 (24 self)
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Distributed Algorithmic Mechanism Design (DAMD) combines theoretical computer science’s traditional focus on computational tractability with its more recent interest in incentive compatibility and distributed computing. The Internet’s decentralized nature, in which distributed computation and autonomous agents prevail, makes DAMD a very natural approach for many Internet problems. This paper first outlines the basics of DAMD and then reviews previous DAMD results on multicast cost sharing and interdomain routing. The remainder of the paper describes several promising research directions and poses some specific open problems.
A BGP-based Mechanism for Lowest-Cost Routing
, 2002
"... The routing of traffic between... this paper, we address the problem of interdomain routing from a mechanism-design point of view. The application of mechanism-design principles to the study of routing is the subject of earlier work by Nisan and Ronen [15] and Hershberger and Suri [11]. In this pape ..."
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Cited by 268 (16 self)
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The routing of traffic between... this paper, we address the problem of interdomain routing from a mechanism-design point of view. The application of mechanism-design principles to the study of routing is the subject of earlier work by Nisan and Ronen [15] and Hershberger and Suri [11]. In this paper, we formulate and solve a version of the routing-mechanism design problem that is different from the previously studied version in three ways that make it more accurately reflective of real-world interdomain routing: (1) we treat the nodes as strategic agents, rather than the links; (2) our mechanism computes lowest-cost routes for all source-destination pairs and payments for transit nodes on all of the routes (rather than computing routes and payments for only one source-destination pair at a time, as is done in [15,11]); (3) we show how to compute our mechanism with a distributed algorithm that is a straightforward extension to BGP and causes only modest increases in routingtable size and convergence time (in contrast with the centralized algorithms used in [15,11]). This approach of using an existing protocol as a substrate for distributed computation may prove useful in future development of Internet algorithms generally, not only for routing or pricing problems. Our design and analysis of a strategyproof, BGP-based routing mechanism provides a new, promising direction in distributed algorithmic mechanism design, which has heretofore been focused mainly on multicast cost sharing.
Beyond Moulin Mechanisms
"... The only known general technique for designing truthful, approximately budget-balanced cost-sharing mechanisms is due to Moulin. While Moulin mechanisms have been successfully designed for a wide range of applications, recent negative results show that for many fundamental cost-sharing problems, Mou ..."
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Cited by 27 (5 self)
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The only known general technique for designing truthful, approximately budget-balanced cost-sharing mechanisms is due to Moulin. While Moulin mechanisms have been successfully designed for a wide range of applications, recent negative results show that for many fundamental cost-sharing problems, Moulin mechanisms inevitably suffer from poor budget-balance, poor economic efficiency, or both. We propose acyclic mechanisms, a new framework for designing truthful, approximately budget-balanced cost-sharing mechanisms. Acyclic mechanisms strictly generalize Moulin mechanisms and offer three important advantages. First, it is easier to design acyclic mechanisms than Moulin mechanisms: many classical primal-dual algorithms naturally induce a non-Moulin acyclic mechanism with good performance guarantees. Second, for several important classes of cost-sharing problems, acyclic mechanisms have exponentially better budget-balance and economic efficiency than Moulin mechanisms. Finally, while Moulin mechanisms have found application primarily in binary demand games, we extend acyclic mechanisms to general demand games, a multiparameter setting in which each bidder can be allocated one of several levels of service.
Optimal cost-sharing mechanisms for steiner forest problems
- In Proceedings of the 2nd Workshop on Internet and Network Economics (WINE
, 2006
"... Abstract. Könemann, Leonardi, and Schäfer [14] gave a 2-budget-balanced and groupstrategyproof mechanism for Steiner forest cost-sharing problems. We prove that this mechanism also achieves an O(log 2 k)approximation of the social cost, where k is the number of players. As a consequence, the KLS mec ..."
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Cited by 16 (0 self)
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Abstract. Könemann, Leonardi, and Schäfer [14] gave a 2-budget-balanced and groupstrategyproof mechanism for Steiner forest cost-sharing problems. We prove that this mechanism also achieves an O(log 2 k)approximation of the social cost, where k is the number of players. As a consequence, the KLS mechanism has the smallest-possible worst-case efficiency loss, up to constant factors, among all O(1)-budget-balanced Moulin mechanisms for such cost functions. We also extend our results to a more general network design problem. 1
Design multicast protocols for non-cooperative networks,”
- IEEE INFOCOM.
, 2005
"... Abstract-Conventionally, most network protocols assume that the network entities who participate in the network activities will always behave as instructed. However, in practice, most network entities are selfish: they will try to maximize their own benefits instead of altruistically contributing t ..."
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Cited by 15 (8 self)
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Abstract-Conventionally, most network protocols assume that the network entities who participate in the network activities will always behave as instructed. However, in practice, most network entities are selfish: they will try to maximize their own benefits instead of altruistically contributing to the network by following the prescribed protocols. Thus, new protocols should be designed for the non-cooperative network that is composed of selfish entities. In this paper, we specifically show how to design truthful multicast protocols for non-cooperative networks such that these selfish entities will follow the protocols out of their own interests. By assuming that every entity has a fixed cost for a specific multicast, we give a general framework to decide whether it is possible and how, if possible, to transform an existing multicast protocol to a truthful multicast protocol by designing a proper payment protocol. We then show how the payments to those relay entities are shared fairly among all receivers so that it encourages collaboration among receivers. As running examples, we show how to design truthful multicast protocols for several multicast structures that are currently used in practice. We also conduct extensive simulations to study the relation between the payment and the cost of the multicast structure. Our simulations show that multicast not only saves the total resources, but also benefits the individual receiver even in selfish networks.
Sharing the Cost of Multicast Transmissions in Wireless Networks
, 2007
"... We investigate the problem of sharing the cost of a multicast transmission in a wireless network in which each node (i.e., radio station) of the network corresponds to a (set of) user(s) potentially interested in receiving the transmission. As in the model considered by Feigenbaum et al. [2001], use ..."
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Cited by 14 (2 self)
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We investigate the problem of sharing the cost of a multicast transmission in a wireless network in which each node (i.e., radio station) of the network corresponds to a (set of) user(s) potentially interested in receiving the transmission. As in the model considered by Feigenbaum et al. [2001], users may act selfishly and report a false “level of interest” in receiving the transmission trying to be charged less by the system. We consider the issue of designing so called truthful mechanisms for the problem of maximizing the net worth (i.e., the overall “satisfaction” of the users minus the cost of the transmission) for the case of wireless networks. Intuitively, truthful mechanisms guarantee that no user has an incentive in reporting a false valuation of the transmission. Unlike the “wired” network case, here the cost of a set of connections implementing a multicast tree is not the sum of the single edge costs, thus introducing a complicating factor in the problem. We provide both positive and negative results on the existence of optimal algorithms for the problem and their use to obtain VCG truthful mechanisms achieving the same performances.
Optimal efficiency guarantees for network design mechanisms
- IN PROCEEDINGS OF THE 12TH CONFERENCE ON INTEGER PROGRAMMING AND COMBINATORIAL OPTIMIZATION (IPCO), VOLUME 4513 OF LECTURE NOTES IN COMPUTER SCIENCE
, 2007
"... A cost-sharing problem is defined by a set of players vying to receive some good or service, and a cost function describing the cost incurred by the auctioneer as a function of the set of winners. A costsharing mechanism is a protocol that decides which players win the auction and at what prices. ..."
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Cited by 12 (1 self)
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A cost-sharing problem is defined by a set of players vying to receive some good or service, and a cost function describing the cost incurred by the auctioneer as a function of the set of winners. A costsharing mechanism is a protocol that decides which players win the auction and at what prices. Three desirable but provably mutually incompatible properties of a cost-sharing mechanism are: incentive-compatibility, meaning that players are motivated to bid their true private value for receiving the good; budget-balance, meaning that the mechanism recovers its incurred cost with the prices charged; and efficiency, meaning that the cost incurred and the value to the players served are traded off in an optimal way. Our work is motivated by the following fundamental question: for which cost-sharing problems are incentive-compatible mechanisms with good approximate budget-balance and efficiency possible? We focus on cost functions defined implicitly by NP-hard combinatorial optimization problems, including the metric uncapacitated facility location problem, the Steiner tree problem, and rent-or-buy network design problems. For facility location and rent-or-buy network design, we establish for the first time that approximate budget-balance and efficiency are simultaneously possible. For the Steiner tree problem, where such a guarantee was previously known, we prove a new, optimal lower bound on the approximate efficiency achievable by the wide and natural class of “Moulin mechanisms”. This lower bound exposes a latent approximation hierarchy among different cost-sharing problems.
The communication cost of selfishness
- Journal of Economic Theory
, 2005
"... We consider the amount of communication required to implement a given decision rule when the mechanism must be ex post or Bayesian incentive compatible. In ex post incentive compatibility, the communication protocol must reveal enough information to calculate monetary transfers to the agents to moti ..."
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Cited by 10 (0 self)
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We consider the amount of communication required to implement a given decision rule when the mechanism must be ex post or Bayesian incentive compatible. In ex post incentive compatibility, the communication protocol must reveal enough information to calculate monetary transfers to the agents to motivate them to be honest (agents ’ payoffs areassumedtobequasilinear in such transfers). For Bayesian incentive compatibility, the protocol may need to hide some information from the agents to prevent deviations contingent on the information. In both cases, the selfishness of the agents can substancially increase the communication costs. We provide an exponential upper bound on the communication cost of selfishness, which is tight in the Bayesian setting. Whether this exponential upper bound is ever achieved in the ex post setting remains an open question. We examine some extensions of our initial setting. In particular we show that for the average-case communication complexity measure, the communication cost of selfishness may be arbitrarily large in both ex post and Bayesian settings. We also examine some special cases in which the communication cost of selfishness proves to be very low, in particular when we want to implement efficiency. 1
Is Shapley Cost Sharing Optimal?
"... Abstract. We study the best guarantees of efficiency approximation achievable by cost-sharing mechanisms. Our main result is the first quantitative lower bound that applies to all truthful cost-sharing mechanisms, including randomized mechanisms that are only truthful in expectation, and only β-budg ..."
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Cited by 9 (0 self)
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Abstract. We study the best guarantees of efficiency approximation achievable by cost-sharing mechanisms. Our main result is the first quantitative lower bound that applies to all truthful cost-sharing mechanisms, including randomized mechanisms that are only truthful in expectation, and only β-budget-balanced in expectation. Our lower bound is optimal up to constant factors and applies even to the simple and central special case of the public excludable good problem. We also give a stronger lower bound for a subclass of deterministic cost-sharing mechanisms, which is driven by a new characterization of the Shapley value mechanism. Finally, we show a separation between the best-possible efficiency guarantees achievable by deterministic and randomized cost-sharing mechanisms.
Profit Maximizing Mechanisms for the Extended Multicasting Game
, 2002
"... We consider the design of multicast networks when both edges and nodes are selfish agents. Our objective is a budget-balanced, strategy-proof mechanism which selects the set of clients to receive service and constructs a network to provide the service. It extracts payments from the clients and pays ..."
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Cited by 8 (2 self)
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We consider the design of multicast networks when both edges and nodes are selfish agents. Our objective is a budget-balanced, strategy-proof mechanism which selects the set of clients to receive service and constructs a network to provide the service. It extracts payments from the clients and pays edges to participate in the network, and aims to maximize profit from the transaction. We introduce the notion of profit guaranteeing mechanisms, and show the existence of one such mechanism. The mechanism provides guarantees of the form that in a suciently profitable market, it obtains some fraction of the obtainable profit, and if the market is suciently unprofitable, then the mechanism demonstrates that no profitable solution exists. The mechanism runs in polynomial time. To our knowledge, this is the first study of mechanisms for designing multicast networks in which edge values are unknown.
