Optimal allocation of an indivisible good

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Shao, Ran; Zhou, Lin
• 署名单位: Yeshiva University; Shanghai Jiao Tong University
• 刊物名称: GAMES AND ECONOMIC BEHAVIOR
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0899-8256
• DOI: 10.1016/j.geb.2016.09.004
• 发表日期: 2016
• 页码: 95-112
• 关键词: Dominance incentive mechanisms; Average efficiency; Fixed-price mechanisms; Option mechanisms; budget balance

摘要

In this paper, we consider the problem of allocating an indivisible good efficiently between two agents with monetary transfers. We focus on allocation mechanisms that are dominant-strategy incentive compatible when agents' types are private information. Inefficiency of an allocation mechanism may come from two sources: misallocation of the indivisible good and an imbalanced budget. Unfortunately, as Green and Laffont (1979) demonstrate, no allocation mechanism can always overcome both kinds of inefficiency. We identify allocation mechanisms that maximize the expected total utilities of agents, and characterize optimal mechanisms for a large class of agents' type distributions. For strongly regular type distributions, we show that the optimal mechanisms must be budget-balanced: they are either fixed-price mechanisms or option mechanisms. The result may not hold for other type distributions. For certain type distributions, we show that optimal mechanisms are hybrids of Vickrey-Clarke-Groves mechanisms and budget balanced mechanisms. (C) 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.