Overcoming free riding in multi-party computations - The anonymous case

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Smorodinsky, Rann; Tennenholtz, Moshe
• 署名单位: Technion Israel Institute of Technology
• 刊物名称: GAMES AND ECONOMIC BEHAVIOR
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0899-8256
• DOI: 10.1016/j.geb.2005.05.001
• 发表日期: 2006
• 页码: 385-406
• 关键词: multi-party computations; Sequential mechanisms; equilibrium; revelation principle; information acquisition

摘要

This paper addresses the question of multi-party computation in a model with asymmetric information. Each agent has a private value (secret), but in contrast to standard models, the agent incurs a cost when retrieving the secret. There is a social choice function the agents would like to compute and implement. All agents would like to perform a joint computation, which input is their vector of secrets. However, agents would like to free-ride on others' contribution. A mechanism which elicits players' secrets and performs the desired computation defines a game. A mechanism is 'appropriate' if it (weakly) implements the social choice function for all secret vectors. namely, if there exists an equilibrium in which it is able to elicit (sufficiently many) agents' secrets and perform the computation, for all possible secret vectors. We show that 'appropriate' mechanisms approach agents sequentially and that they have low communication complexity. (c) 2005 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.