Axiomatic and Strategic Analysis of Resource Allocation

该项目支持对研究生的指导和资源分配的公理和战略分析方面的研究。这位研究者是经济学这一子领域的领军人物。他的研究目标是严格地从具有理想的规范性和战略性的社会选择规则的基本公理中衍生出来。考虑的选择和偏好是在标准经济问题中遇到的那种。这项研究的动机是具体的经济问题，因此具有相当大的现实意义。本项目探索不能通过代理人之间的借贷操纵的公平分配规则。防借款性意味着，代理人永远不应该通过借入资源来获利。该项目还提出了通过退出(不出现以换取回扣)、标准问题和公平分配、或通过交付前、或通过合并捐赠基金、通过拆分捐赠基金来免除操纵的想法。这些形式的战略行为以前没有被系统地研究过。他们的分析将需要新的技术，特别是因为他们不能仅根据当地信息进行核实。因此，边际分析不能被调用。中介影响：代理人在任何时候都可以战略性地行事，理解如何防止他们这样做必须是分配规则设计的一部分。通过歪曲代理人控制的资源进行操纵是他们试图获得他们喜欢的结果的一种重要方式。这些公平分配规则有很多应用。这个项目研究了排队、调度、分配私人商品(无论是否可以获得金钱补偿)、在偏好达到单峰期时分配商品、以及选择公共产品方面的这些性质。在每种情况下，都研究了战略目标与效率和基本分配要求的兼容性。

This project supports the mentoring of graduate students and research in the axiomatic and strategic analysis of resource allocation. The investigator is the leader in this subfield of economics. The goal of his research is to rigorously derive from fundamental axioms rules of social choice that have desirable normative and strategic properties. The alternatives and preferences considered are the kinds encountered in standard economic problems. The research is motivated by concrete economic problems and as a consequence can have considerable practical significance.This project explores rules of fair division that can not be manipulated by borrowing and lending among the agents. Borrowing-proofness says that agents should never gain by borrowing resources. The project also formulates the ideas of immunity to manipulation through withdrawal (not showing up in exchange for a kickback), for standard problems and for fair division, or through pre-delivery, or through merging endowments, and through splitting endowments. These forms of strategic behavior have not been systematically studied before. Their analysis will require new techniques, especially because they cannot be verified on the basis of local information only. Thus, marginal analysis cannot be invoked.Broader Impacts: Agents behave strategically whenever they can, and understanding how they can be prevented from doing so has to be part of the design of allocation rules. Manipulation through misrepresenting the resources agents control is an important way in which they attempt to obtain outcomes they prefer. There are many applications of these fair allocation rules. This project studies these properties in queueing, scheduling, allocating private goods, divisible or not, when monetary compensations are possible or when they are not; allocating a good when preferences are single-peaked; and choosing public goods. In each case, the compatibility of the strategic objective with efficiency and basic distributional requirements are studied.