Approximate mechanism design without money

The literature on algorithmic mechanism design is mostly concerned with game-theoretic versions of optimization problems to which standard economic money-based mechanisms cannot be applied efficiently. Recent years have seen the design of various truthful approximation mechanisms that rely on enforcing payments. In this paper, we advocate the reconsideration of highly structured optimization problems in the context of mechanism design. We argue that, in such domains, approximation can be leveraged to obtain truthfulness without resorting to payments. This stands in contrast to previous work where payments are ubiquitous, and (more often than not) approximation is a necessary evil that is required to circumvent computational complexity. We present a case study in approximate mechanism design without money. In our basic setting agents are located on the real line and the mechanism must select the location of a public facility; the cost of an agent is its distance to the facility. We est...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2009
• Where: SIGECOM
• Authors: Ariel D. Procaccia, Moshe Tennenholtz
• Keywords: Approximation, Information Management, Mechanism Design, SIGECOM 2009, Truthful Approximation Mechanisms