EAGER: Self-Uncertainty in Mechanism Design

EAGER：机制设计中的自我不确定性

• 批准号: 1519135
• 负责人: Silvio Micali
• 金额: $ 30万
• 依托单位: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2015
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2015-06-15 至 2018-05-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1519135&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: EAGER; Self; Uncertainty; Mechanism; Design

Mechanism design aims to make the best decisions when the necessary data is in the hands of selfish players with different motives and incentives. A mechanism specifies what each player may report and a way to select the outcome from the players' reports. Although mechanism design was originally developed to study auctions in the field of finance, interest in mechanism design arose from its potential in the design of protocols for large distributed heterogeneous systems where the preferences of people and organizations influenced the outcome of the protocol. The proper and computationally efficient working of such systems does not solely rely on fast algorithms and cryptographically secure protocols but also on a correct incentive analysis.This project investigates more general models of mechanism design. The players are assumed to be uncertain of their own true valuations, knowing only a set of candidate valuations. The notion of utility by a player may also be broadened. A player may maximize their utility while using regret minimization to refine their set of non-dominated strategies if needed. A player may seek to decrease their uncertainty and sharpen their understanding about their own utility by investing in the means to increase their knowledge about their own valuations before acting in a mechanism. These extensions will allow more robust and realistic mechanism design of cryptographic protocols.

机制设计的目的是在必要的数据掌握在具有不同动机和激励的自私参与者手中时做出最佳决策。 一种机制规定了每个玩家可以报告什么，以及从玩家的报告中选择结果的方法。 虽然机制设计最初是为了研究金融领域的拍卖而开发的，但人们对机制设计的兴趣源于其在大型分布式异构系统协议设计中的潜力，在这些系统中，人们和组织的偏好影响了协议的结果。 这类系统的正确和计算效率的工作不仅依赖于快速算法和密码安全协议，而且还依赖于正确的激励分析。假设参与者不确定自己的真实估值，只知道一组候选估值。 参与者的效用概念也可以扩大。 一个参与者可以最大化他们的效用，同时使用后悔最小化，以完善他们的非劣势策略，如果需要的话。 一个参与者可能会寻求减少他们的不确定性，并通过投资于增加他们对自己估值的了解的手段来加深他们对自己效用的理解。 这些扩展将使密码协议的机制设计更加健壮和现实。