Strategic deliberation and truthful revelation: an impossibility result

In many market settings, agents do not know their preferences a priori. Instead, they may have to solve computationally complex optimization problems, query databases, or perform expensive searches in order to determine their values for different outcomes. For such settings, we have introduced the deliberation equilibrium as the game-theoretic solution concept where the agents’ deliberation actions are modeled as part of their strategies. In this paper we lay out auction design principles for deliberative agents. We propose a set of intuitive properties which are desirable in auctions for deliberative agents. First, we propose that auctions should be non-deliberative: the auction should not actively do the deliberation for the agents. Second, auctions should be deliberation-proof : in equilibrium agents should not have an incentive to deliberate on each others’ valuation problems. Third, the auction should be non-deceiving: agents should not have incentive to strategically misrep...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2004
• Where: SIGECOM
• Authors: Kate Larson, Tuomas Sandholm
• Keywords: Auctions, Deliberation, Deliberative Agents, SIGECOM 2004