Strategy-Proof Mechanisms for Interdependent Task Allocation with Private Durations

Abstract

Classical mechanism design assumes that an agent’s value of any determined outcome depends only on its private information. However in many situations, an agent’s value of an outcome depends on the private information of other agents in addition to its private information. In such settings where agents have interdependent valuations, strategy-proof mechanisms have not been proposed yet, and when these mechanisms are possible is still an open research question. Toward addressing this question, we consider the interdependent task allocation (ITA) problem, where a set of tasks with predefined dependencies is to be assigned to self-interested agents based on what they report about their privately known capabilities and costs. We consider here the possibility that tasks may fail during their executions, which imposes interdependencies between the agents’ valuations. In this study, we design mechanisms and prove their strategy-proofness along with other properties for a class of ITA settings where an agent’s privately known costs are modeled as privately known durations.