AF: Small: Effective Resource Allocation Mechanisms: Fairness and Incentives

本计画将着重探讨在竞争代理间分配有限数量的共享资源的问题，这是运筹学与经济学的基本问题。这些问题在许多情况下都会出现：在计算机和通信网络中进行调度，决定公共设施的位置，为未来的学生匹配大学，为研究生分配住房，为等待名单上的病人分配器官，在兄弟姐妹之间分配遗产，分担公共物品的成本，本项目的中心目标是设计有效的资源分配机制，这些机制（i）具有强有力的理论依据;（ii）易于计算;（iii）易于在实践中实施。该项目可以大致分为两个部分：第一部分涉及的概念，平衡的基础上最大限度地减少遗憾，并将探讨其对机制设计的影响。这种方法的初步结果讨价还价的问题，不完全信息似乎有希望。本项目的第二部分涉及匹配和分配问题。在这里，非标准的标准，如公平和激励被纳入一些研究的优化模型。该项目将设法确定有可能为若干自然模式设计既公平又激励相容的机制的条件。目标之一是通过说明一个学科中的研究问题、思想和工具如何为另一个学科提供信息和丰富，促进经济学家和优化研究人员之间的更大互动。如果成功的话，该项目的结果将导致更好地理解重要的现象，如共谋和联盟的形成在匹配和分配problems.The方法在这个项目中开发，并从他们派生的算法有可能提高几个现实生活中的系统的性能。例如，匹配和分配问题的工作受到了“学校选择”问题的启发。这项研究的结果将提供洞察资源分配决策如何与激励相容性和公平性的目标（往往是相互冲突的）相互作用。 拟议项目的教育目标包括在本科生和研究生课程中介绍机械设计领域令人兴奋的最新发展。这些课程将使本科生和研究生接触到各种各样的公共决策问题，这些问题适用于优化方法和工具。

This project will focus on the problem of allocating a limited number of shared resources among competing agents, which is a fundamental problem in operations research and economics. Such problems arise in many settings: scheduling in computer and communication networks, deciding where to locate public facilities, matching colleges to prospective students, assigning housing to graduate students, allocating organs to patients on a waiting-list, dividing an estate between siblings, sharing the cost of a public good, etc. The central aim of this project is to design effective resource allocation mechanisms that (i) have a strong theoretical justification; (ii) are easy to compute; and (iii) are simple to implement in practice. The project can be broadly classified in two parts: the first part deals with a notion of equilibrium based on minimizing maximum regret, and will explore its implications for mechanism design. Initial results of this approach to bargaining problems with incomplete information appear promising. The second part of the project deals with matching and allocation problems. Here, nonstandard criteria such as fairness and incentives are incorporated into some well-studied optimization models. The project will seek to characterize conditions under which it is possible to design mechanisms that are both fair and incentive-compatible for a number of natural models. One of the aims will be to promote a greater interaction between economists and optimization researchers by illustrating how the research questions, ideas, and tools in one discipline can inform and enrich the other. If successful, the results of the project will lead to a better understanding of important phenomena such as collusion and coalition formation in matching and allocation problems.The methods developed in this project, and the algorithms derived from them have the potential to improve the performance of several real-life systems. For example, the work on matching and allocation problems is inspired by applications to "school choice" problems. The results of this research will provide insight into how resource allocation decisions interact with the (often conflicting) goals of incentive-compatibility and fairness. The educational goals of the proposed project include the introduction of the exciting recent developments in the area of mechanism design in the undergraduate and graduate curriculum. These courses will serve to expose the undergraduate and graduate students to the large variety of public-decision making problems for which optimization methods and tools are applicable.