Abstract
Server works in discrete time, and is equipped with a given sequence of per-date capacities. It has to accommodate a set of agents with unit jobs, arriving at different dates. It can process a job in several installments, however no monetary transfers are allowed. Server is given jobs’ birth dates and it only knows that agents want their jobs done as soon as possible, but not agents’ complete preferences over delays (thus, this is the model with ordinal input). We investigate how scheduling rules, coming from both assignment and queueing literature, fare in this setting. The tension between fairness and incentive compatibility, inherent to the assignment models, disappears on this domain, as both Serial and Random Priority assignment rules become strategy-proof and non-envious. This is also true for Uniform rule; but First Come First Serve or First Come Last Serve rules are not strategy-proof and generate envy.
Article PDF
Similar content being viewed by others
Avoid common mistakes on your manuscript.
References
Abdulkadiroglu, A., Sönmez, T.: Random serial dictatorship and the core from random endowments in house allocation problems. Econometrica 66, 689–701 (1998)
Abdulkadiroglu, A., Sönmez, T.: Ordinal efficiency and dominated sets. J. Econ. Theory 112, 157–172 (2003)
Bogomolnaia, A.: Random assignment: redefining the Serial rule. J. Econ. Theory 158(Part A), 308–318 (2015)
Bogomolnaia, A., Moulin, H.: A new solution to the random assignment problem. J. Econ. Theory 100(2), 295–328 (2001)
Bogomolnaia, A., Moulin, H.: A simple random assignment problem with a unique solution. Econ. Theory 19(3), 623–636 (2002). https://doi.org/10.1007/s001990100168
Bogomolnaia, A., Heo, E.J.: Probabilistic assignment of objects: characterizing the serial rule. J. Econ. Theory 147, 2072–2082 (2012)
Che, Y.-K., Kojima, F.: Asymptotic equivalence of random priority and probabilistic serial mechanisms. Econometrica 78, 1625–1672 (2010)
Demers, A., Keshav, S., Shenker, S.: Analysis and simulation of a fair queueing algorithm. ACM SIGCOMM Comput. Commun. Rev. 19(4), 1–12 (1989)
Friedman, E.J., Henderson, S.G.: Fairness and efficiency in web server protocols. ACM SIGMETRICS Perform. Eval. Rev. 31(1), 229–237 (2003)
Friedman, E., Psomas, C.A., Vardi, S.: Dynamic fair division with minimal disruptions. In: Proceedings of the Sixteenth ACM Conference on Economics and Computation (2015)
Ghosh, S., Long, Y., Mitra, M.: Prior-free online mechanisms for queueing with arrivals. Econ. Theory 72, 671–700 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00199-020-01308-7
Hashimoto, T., Hirata, H., Kesten, O., Kurino, M., Ünver, U.M.: Two axiomatic approaches to the probabilistic serial mechanism. Theor. Econ. 9, 253–277 (2014)
Hougaard, J.L., Moreno-Ternero, J.D., Osterdal, L.P.: Assigning agents to a line. Games Econom. Behav. 87, 539–553 (2014)
Kasajima, Y.: Probabilistic assignment of indivisible goods with single-peaked preferences. Soc. Choice Welf. 41, 203–215 (2013)
Katta, A.K., Sethuraman, J.: A solution to the random assignment problem on the full preference domain. J. Econ. Theory 131, 231–250 (2006)
Mitra, M.: Mechanism design in queueing problems. Econ. Theory 17(2), 277–305 (2000). https://doi.org/10.1007/PL00004107
Mitra, M., Sen, A.: Efficient allocation of heterogenous commodities with balanced transfers. Soc. Choice Welf. 35(1), 29–48 (2010)
Moulin, H.: Minimizing the worst slowdown: offline, online. Oper. Res. 55(5), 876–889 (2007)
Moulin, H., Shenker, S.: Serial cost sharing. Econometrica 60(5), 1009–1037 (1992)
Moulin, H., Stong, R.: Fair queuing and other probabilistic allocation methods. Math. Oper. Res. 27, 1 (2002)
Nesterov, A.S.: Fairness and efficiency in strategy-proof object allocation mechanisms. J. Econ. Theory 170, 145–168 (2017)
Suijs, J.: On incentive compatibility and budget balancedness in public decision making. Econ. Des. 2(1), 193–209 (1996)
Schulman, L.J., Vazirani, V.V.: Allocation of divisible goods under lexicographic preferences. In: Proceedings of the FSTTCS, pp. 543–559 (2015)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Publisher's Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
About this article
Cite this article
Bogomolnaia, A. On slots’ scheduling. Econ Theory 77, 653–674 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00199-023-01508-x
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00199-023-01508-x