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Collusion-Resistant Mechanisms with Verification Yielding Optimal Solutions

Published: 01 May 2012 Publication History

Abstract

A truthful mechanism consists of an algorithm augmented with a suitable payment function that guarantees that the players cannot improve their utilities by cheating. Mechanism design approaches are particularly appealing for designing protocols that cannot be manipulated by rational players.
We present new constructions of so-called mechanisms with verification introduced by Nisan and Ronen [2001]. We first show how to obtain mechanisms that, for single-parameter domains, are resistant to coalitions of colluding agents even if they can exchange compensations. Based on this result we derive a class of exact truthful mechanisms with verification for arbitrary bounded domains. This class of problems includes most of the problems studied in the algorithmic mechanism design literature and for which exact solutions cannot be obtained with truthful mechanisms without verification. This result is an improvement over all known previous constructions of exact mechanisms with verification.

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      cover image ACM Transactions on Computation Theory
      ACM Transactions on Computation Theory  Volume 4, Issue 2
      May 2012
      91 pages
      ISSN:1942-3454
      EISSN:1942-3462
      DOI:10.1145/2189778
      Issue’s Table of Contents
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      Publication History

      Published: 01 May 2012
      Accepted: 01 February 2012
      Revised: 01 November 2011
      Received: 01 February 2011
      Published in TOCT Volume 4, Issue 2

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      Author Tags

      1. Game theory
      2. algorithmic mechanism design
      3. collusion

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