Mechanism design with a restricted action space

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Blumrosen, Liad; Feldman, Michal
• 署名单位: Hebrew University of Jerusalem; Hebrew University of Jerusalem; Hebrew University of Jerusalem
• 刊物名称: GAMES AND ECONOMIC BEHAVIOR
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0899-8256
• DOI: 10.1016/j.geb.2013.03.005
• 发表日期: 2013
• 页码: 424-443
• 关键词: Mechanism design; Message space; implementation; communication complexity; Expressiveness

摘要

While traditional mechanism design typically assumes isomorphism between the type space of the players and their action space, behavioral, technical or regulatory factors can severely restrict the set of actions that are actually available to players. We study single-parameter mechanism-design problems in environments with restricted action spaces. In our first main result, we provide sufficient conditions under which the information-theoretically optimal solution can be implemented in equilibrium. Our second main result shows that for a wide family of social-choice rules the optimal mechanisms with k actions incur an expected loss of O(1/k(2)) compared to the optimal mechanisms with unrestricted action space. We also fully characterize the optimal mechanisms in some simple environments and, finally, we apply our general results to signaling games, public-good models and project planning. (C) 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.