CIF: Small: Intervention: A Design Framework for Resource Sharing and Exchanges Among Self-interested Users

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In non-cooperative resource sharing and exchange systems, users compete for available resources aiming to optimize their individual objectives. Operation by self-interested users often results in suboptimal performance from a system designer's point of view. This research involves the development of a new incentive design framework for resource sharing and exchange systems where the designer can perfectly or imperfectly monitor the actions of self-interested users and intervene in their interaction. The investigators systematically study what the designer can achieve in terms of improving the performance of various non-cooperative networks and systems by designing suitable protocols and how it can achieve these improvements, given its abilities to monitor the users and its capability to intervene. This research formulates and solves the designer's problem of finding an optimal intervention rule that optimizes the designer's objective while explicitly considering the selfish nature of users. The results obtained characterize the extent to which the designer can shape the incentives of users depending on its ability to monitor the actions of users and to impact the payoffs of users. The investigators systematically study both multi-user interactions scenarios where the users interact sporadically, which will be modeled as one-shot games with intervention, as well as the case where users establish long-term relationships, which will be modeled as repeated games with intervention. In both scenarios, the cases of perfect and imperfect monitoring of the users? actions will be investigated. Overall, this research provides a novel framework to evaluate the performance gain from having a designer that has a monitoring and intervention ability, and to figure out the best way to utilize its capabilities.