Nonbossy mechanisms: Mechanism design robust to secondary goals

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Leme, Renato Paes; Schneider, Jon; Zhang, Hanrui
• 署名单位: Alphabet Inc.; Google Incorporated; Chinese University of Hong Kong
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC THEORY
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0022-0531
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jet.2026.106187
• 发表日期: 2026
• 关键词: strategy-proof allocation; revenue maximization; auctions; GOODS

摘要

We study mechanism design when agents may have hidden secondary goals which will play role when the primary utility of the outcomes is the same. We show that in such cases, a mechanism is immune to strategic manipulation if and only if it is incentive compatible with regard to primary utility - a property we term primary incentive compatibility - and nonbossy a well-studied property in the context of matching and allocation mechanisms. We give complete characterizations of primarily incentive-compatible and nonbossy mechanisms in various settings, including auctions with single-parameter agents and public decision settings where agents share a common outcome. In particular, we show that in the single-item setting, a mechanism is primarily incentive compatible, individually rational, and nonbossy if and only if it sequential posted-price mechanism.