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Collusion-Resistant Mechanisms with Verification Yielding Optimal Solutions

Published:01 May 2012Publication History
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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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      • Published in

        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

        Copyright © 2012 ACM

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        Association for Computing Machinery

        New York, NY, United States

        Publication History

        • Published: 1 May 2012
        • Accepted: 1 February 2012
        • Revised: 1 November 2011
        • Received: 1 February 2011
        Published in toct Volume 4, Issue 2

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