Abstract
A common modeling assumption in the realm of cost sharing is that players persuade each other to jointly submit false bids if none of the members of such a coalition loses utility and at least one gains. In order to counteract this kind of manipulation, the service provider could employ group-strategyproof (GSP) mechanisms that elicit truthful bids. The basically only general technique for the design of GSP mechanisms is due to Moulin. Unfortunately, it has limitations with regard to budget-balance (BB) and economic efficiency (EFF).
In this work, we introduce a slight modification of GSP that we call CGSP, allowing us to achieve vastly better results concerning BB and EFF. In particular, we give new CGSP mechanisms that we call “egalitarian” due to being inspired by Dutta and Ray’s (1989) “egalitarian solution”. We achieve 1-BB for arbitrary costs and additionally 2H n -EFF for the very natural and large class of subadditive costs. Egalitarian mechanisms are also acyclic mechanisms, as introduced by Mehta et al. (2007). Thus far, acyclic was known only to imply weak GSP, yet we show that it is already sufficient for the strictly stronger CGSP.
Finally, we present a framework and applications on how to cope with computational complexity.
This work was partially supported by the IST Program of the European Union under contract number IST-15964 (AEOLUS).
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Bleischwitz, Y., Monien, B.: Fair cost-sharing methods for scheduling jobs on parallel machines. In: Calamoneri, T., Finocchi, I., Italiano, G.F. (eds.) CIAC 2006. LNCS, vol. 3998, pp. 175–186. Springer, Heidelberg (2006)
Bleischwitz, Y., Monien, B., Schoppmann, F., Tiemann, K.: The power of two prices: Beyond cross-monotonicity. In: Kučera, L., Kučera, A. (eds.) MFCS 2007. LNCS, vol. 4708, pp. 657–668. Springer, Heidelberg (2007)
Brenner, J., Schäfer, G.: Cost sharing methods for makespan and completion time scheduling. In: Proc. of the 24th International Symposium on Theoretical Aspects of Computer Science. LNCS, vol. 4393, pp. 670–681 (2007)
Bruckner, P.: Scheduling Algorithms. Springer, Heidelberg (1995)
Chawla, S., Roughgarden, T., Sundararajan, M.: Optimal cost-sharing mechanisms for Steiner forest problems. In: Spirakis, P.G., Mavronicolas, M., Kontogiannis, S.C. (eds.) WINE 2006. LNCS, vol. 4286, pp. 112–123. Springer, Heidelberg (2006)
Devanur, N.R., Mihail, M., Vazirani, V.V.: Strategyproof cost-sharing mechanisms for set cover and facility location games. Decision Support Systems 39(1), 11–22 (2005)
Dutta, B., Ray, D.: A concept of egalitarianism under participation constraints. Econometrica 57(3), 615–635 (1989)
Graham, R.: Bounds on multiprocessing timing anomalies. SIAM Journal of Applied Mathematics 17(2), 416–429 (1969)
Graham, R., Lawler, E., Lenstra, J., Rinnooy Kan, A.: Optimization and approximation in deterministic sequencing and scheduling: A survey. Annals of Discrete Mathematics 5, 287–326 (1979)
Green, J., Laffont, J.: Characterizations of satisfactory mechanisms for the revelation of preferences for public goods. Econometrica 45, 427–438 (1977)
Gupta, A., Könemann, J., Leonardi, S., Ravi, R., Schäfer, G.: An efficient cost-sharing mechanism for the prize-collecting Steiner forest problem. In: Proc. of the 18th Annual ACM-SIAM Symposium on Discrete Algorithms (2007)
Hochbaum, D., Shmoys, D.: Using dual approximation algorithms for scheduling problems: theoretical and practical results. Journal of the ACM 34(1), 144–162 (1987)
Immorlica, N., Mahdian, M., Mirrokni, V.: Limitations of cross-monotonic cost sharing schemes. In: Proc. of the 16th Annual ACM-SIAM Symposium on Discrete Algorithms, pp. 602–611 (2005)
Mehta, A., Roughgarden, T., Sundararajan, M.: Beyond Moulin mechanisms. In: Proc. of the 8th ACM Conference on Electronic Commerce, pp. 1–10 (2007)
Moulin, H.: Incremental cost sharing: Characterization by coalition strategy-proofness. Social Choice and Welfare 16(2), 279–320 (1999)
Murgolo, F.D.: Anomalous behavior in bin packing algorithms. Discrete Applied Mathematics 21(3), 229–243 (1988)
Penna, P., Ventre, C.: The algorithmic structure of group strategyproof budget-balanced cost-sharing mechanisms. In: Durand, B., Thomas, W. (eds.) STACS 2006. LNCS, vol. 3884, pp. 337–348. Springer, Heidelberg (2006)
Roughgarden, T., Sundararajan, M.: New trade-offs in cost-sharing mechanisms. In: Proc. of the 38th ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing, pp. 79–88 (2006)
Roughgarden, T., Sundararajan, M.: Optimal efficiency guarantees for network design mechanisms. In: Proc. of the 12th Conference on Integer Programming and Combinatorial Optimization, pp. 469–483 (2007)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2007 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Bleischwitz, Y., Monien, B., Schoppmann, F. (2007). To Be or Not to Be (Served). In: Deng, X., Graham, F.C. (eds) Internet and Network Economics. WINE 2007. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 4858. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-77105-0_55
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-77105-0_55
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-540-77104-3
Online ISBN: 978-3-540-77105-0
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)