AF:Small:Markets, Allocations and Dynamics

AF：小：市场、分配和动态

• 批准号: 1217989
• 负责人: Richard Cole
• 金额: $ 41.31万
• 依托单位: New York University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2012
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2012-09-01 至 2016-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1217989&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: AF; Small; Markets; Allocations; Dynamics

The need for resource allocation is pervasive. Often, it involves participants with conflicting interests. Markets and auctions both serve to produce desirable outcomes despite such conflicting interests, and yet other mechanisms are used when money cannot be exchanged (e.g. in kidney exchanges). An important goal is to find stable outcomes, outcomes with which individual participants are content in the sense that they cannot improve the outcome; these outcomes are called equilibria.For existing settings, such as economic markets and widely used mechanisms (e.g. Internet routing protocols or the Generalized Second Price auction used by major search engines), one wants to understand how well the existing mechanisms work. Specifically (i) In what settings are there equilibrium outcomes? (ii) Can they (or near-equilibria) be found? (iii) Are the equilibrium outcomes plausible, i.e. does it seem reasonable that they will be reached due to the interactions induced by the mechanism? This research will focus on matching markets and the housing market in particular.In other settings, where there are no existing mechanisms or the costs of introducing new mechanisms are not prohibitive, one can seek to design mechanisms that produce desirable outcomes. This research will focus on the allocation of divisible goods (i.e. goods that can be split into many parts).The standard modeling of matching markets, such as the housing market, assumes buyers have sharp budget limits. Unfortunately, when this assumption holds there may be no equilibrium solution. Instead, this research will consider a natural soft budget limit based on residual wealth, a setting where equilibria are guaranteed. The main issue is whether equilibria in this setting are predictors of outcomes. Necessary conditions, which will be investigated, are that the equilibria can be computed efficiently, that approximate equilibria are close to the actual equilibria, and that these approximate equilibria could arise as a result of the actions of buyers and sellers.With regard to mechanism design, as is standard, this research will seek truthful mechanisms, mechanisms which give participants no incentive for strategizing. In other words, participants will achieve their best outcomes by making honest declarations (e.g. of their valuations for different possible allocations). In general, it is not possible to allocate all the resources using truthful mechanisms. Instead, this research aims to understand the quality of the solutions produced by under-allocating yet truthful mechanisms. In particular, this research intends to study the class of proportionally fair mechanisms, mechanisms which were first introduced in the context of internet routing.

对资源分配的需求是普遍存在的。它往往涉及利益冲突的参与者。市场和拍卖都有助于产生理想的结果，尽管存在这种利益冲突，但当货币无法交换时（例如在肾脏交换中），还可以使用其他机制。一个重要的目标是找到稳定的结果，结果与个人参与者的内容在这个意义上，他们不能改善的结果，这些结果被称为均衡。对于现有的设置，如经济市场和广泛使用的机制（例如互联网路由协议或通用第二价格拍卖使用的主要搜索引擎），一个想要了解如何以及现有的机制工作。具体而言，（i）在什么样的环境下会出现均衡结果？(ii)能找到它们（或接近平衡）吗？(iii)均衡结果是否合理，即由于机制引起的相互作用而达到均衡结果是否合理？这项研究将着重于市场的匹配，特别是住房市场，在其他情况下，如果没有现有的机制，或者引入新机制的成本不高，人们可以设法设计产生理想结果的机制。这项研究将集中在可分割商品（即可以分割成许多部分的商品）的分配上。匹配市场（如住房市场）的标准模型假设买家有严格的预算限制。不幸的是，当这个假设成立时，可能没有均衡解。相反，本研究将考虑一个基于剩余财富的自然软预算限制，一个保证均衡的设置。主要的问题是，在这种情况下的均衡是否是结果的预测因子。必要的条件，这将是调查，均衡可以有效地计算，近似均衡接近实际均衡，这些近似均衡可能会出现的结果，买方和卖方的行动。关于机制设计，作为标准，本研究将寻求真实的机制，机制给参与者没有动机的战略。换句话说，参与者将通过做出诚实的声明（例如，他们对不同可能分配的估值）来实现最佳结果。一般来说，不可能使用真实机制分配所有资源。相反，这项研究的目的是了解分配不足但真实的机制产生的解决方案的质量。特别是，本研究旨在研究类的比例公平的机制，这是第一次在互联网路由的上下文中引入的机制。