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119
Sharing the Cost of Multicast Transmissions
, 2001
"... We investigate cost-sharing algorithms for multicast transmission. Economic considerations point to two distinct mechanisms, marginal cost and Shapley value, as the two solutions most appropriate in this context. We prove that the former has a natural algorithm that uses only two messages per link o ..."
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Cited by 284 (16 self)
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We investigate cost-sharing algorithms for multicast transmission. Economic considerations point to two distinct mechanisms, marginal cost and Shapley value, as the two solutions most appropriate in this context. We prove that the former has a natural algorithm that uses only two messages per link of the multicast tree, while we give evidence that the latter requires a quadratic total number of messages. We also show that the welfare value achieved by an optimal multicast tree is NP-hard to approximate within any constant factor, even for bounded-degree networks. The lower-bound proof for the Shapley value uses a novel algebraic technique for bounding from below the number of messages exchanged in a distributed computation; this technique may prove useful in other contexts as well.
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.
Strategyproof Sharing of Submodular Costs: budget balance versus efficiency
, 1999
"... A service is produced for a set of agents. The service is binary, each agent either receives service or not, and the total cost of service is a submodular function of the set receiving service. We investigate strategyproof mechanisms that elicit individual willingness to pay, decide who is served ..."
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Cited by 201 (19 self)
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A service is produced for a set of agents. The service is binary, each agent either receives service or not, and the total cost of service is a submodular function of the set receiving service. We investigate strategyproof mechanisms that elicit individual willingness to pay, decide who is served, and then share the cost among them. If such a mechanism is budget balanced (covers cost exactly), it cannot be efficient (serve the surplus maximizing set of users) and vice-versa. We characterize the rich family of budget balanced and group strategyproof mechanisms; they correspond to the family of cost sharing formulae where an agent's cost share does not decrease when the set of users expand. The mechanism associated with the Shapley value cost sharing formula is characterized by the property that its worst welfare loss is minimal. When we require efficiency rather than budget balance -- the more common route in the literature -- we find that there is a single Clarke-Groves mech...
Applications of Approximation Algorithms to Cooperative Games
- STOC'01
, 2001
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Frugal path mechanisms
, 2002
"... We consider the problem of selecting a low cost s − t path in a graph, where the edge costs are a secret known only to the various economic agents who own them. To solve this problem, Nisan and Ronen applied the celebrated Vickrey-Clarke-Groves (VCG) mechanism, which pays a premium to induce the edg ..."
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Cited by 119 (2 self)
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We consider the problem of selecting a low cost s − t path in a graph, where the edge costs are a secret known only to the various economic agents who own them. To solve this problem, Nisan and Ronen applied the celebrated Vickrey-Clarke-Groves (VCG) mechanism, which pays a premium to induce the edges to reveal their costs truthfully. We observe that this premium can be unacceptably high. There are simple instances where the mechanism pays Θ(k) times the actual cost of the path, even if there is an alternate path available that costs only (1 + ɛ) times as much. This inspires the frugal path problem, which is to design a mechanism that selects a path and induces truthful cost revelation without paying such a high premium. This paper contributes negative results on the frugal path problem. On two large classes of graphs, including ones having three node-disjoint s − t paths, we prove that no reasonable mechanism can always avoid paying a high premium to induce truthtelling. In particular, we introduce a general class of min function mechanisms, and show that all min function mechanisms can be forced to overpay just as badly as VCG. On the other hand, we prove that (on two large classes of graphs) every truthful mechanism satisfying some reasonable properties is a min function mechanism. 1
The theory of implementation in Nash equilibrium: A survey. In: Hurwicz,
, 1985
"... The theory of implementation concerns the problem of designing game forms (sometimes called "mechanisms" or "outcome functions") the equilibria of which have properties that are desirable according to a specified criterion of social welfare called a social choice rule . A game f ..."
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Cited by 75 (4 self)
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The theory of implementation concerns the problem of designing game forms (sometimes called "mechanisms" or "outcome functions") the equilibria of which have properties that are desirable according to a specified criterion of social welfare called a social choice rule . A game form, in effect, decentralizes decision-making. The social alternative is selected by the joint actions of all individuals in society rather than by a central planner. Formally, a social choice rule assigns a set of alternatives to each profile of preferences (or other characteristics) that individuals in society might have; the set consists of the "welfare optima" relative to the preference profile. A game form is a rule that specifies an alternative (or outcome ) for each configuration of actions that individuals take. A game form implements (technically, fully implements) a social choice rule if, for each possible profile of preferences, the equilibrium outcomes of the game form coincide with the welfare optima of the social choice rule. Of course, the equilibrium set depends on the particular solution concept being used. Implementation theory has considered a variety of solution concepts, including equilibrium in dominant strategies, Bayesian equilibrium, and Hash equilibrium. Other chapters of this volume treat the first two equilibrium concepts. In the .main, this article is confined to implementation in Nash equilibrium, although it relates this theory to those of other solution concepts, dominant strategies in particular. Nash equilibrium is the noncooperative solution concept par excellence , and so it is not surprising that implementation theory should have employed it extensively. Nonetheless, one reason often advanced for the desirability
On the hardness of being truthful
- In Proceedings of the 49th Annual IEEE Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science (FOCS
"... Abstract The central problem in computational mechanism design is the tension between incentive compatibility and computational ef ciency. We establish the rst significant approximability gap between algorithms that are both truthful and computationally-ef cient, and algorithms that only achieve on ..."
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Cited by 63 (8 self)
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Abstract The central problem in computational mechanism design is the tension between incentive compatibility and computational ef ciency. We establish the rst significant approximability gap between algorithms that are both truthful and computationally-ef cient, and algorithms that only achieve one of these two desiderata. This is shown in the context of a novel mechanism design problem which we call the COMBINATORIAL PUB-LIC PROJECT PROBLEM (CPPP). CPPP is an abstraction of many common mechanism design situations, ranging from elections of kibbutz committees to network design. Our computational-complexity result is one of the rst impossibility results connecting mechanism design to complexity theory; its novel proof technique involves an application of the Sauer-Shelah Lemma and may be of wider applicability, both within and without mechanism design.
Approximation and Collusion in Multicast Cost Sharing
, 2004
"... in Proceedings of the 3rd ACM Conference on Electronic Commerce, Tampa FL, October 2001. This work was supported by the DoD University Research Initiative (URI) program administered by the Oce of Naval Research under Grant N00014-01-1-0795. ..."
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Cited by 52 (3 self)
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in Proceedings of the 3rd ACM Conference on Electronic Commerce, Tampa FL, October 2001. This work was supported by the DoD University Research Initiative (URI) program administered by the Oce of Naval Research under Grant N00014-01-1-0795.
