research-article

On the communication requirements of verifying the VCG outcome

Authors:

Sebastien Lahaie,

David C. ParkesAuthors Info & Claims

EC '08: Proceedings of the 9th ACM conference on Electronic commerce

Pages 78 - 87

https://doi.org/10.1145/1386790.1386806

Published: 08 July 2008 Publication History

Abstract

We consider the amount of communication required to verify the outcome of the Vickrey-Clarke-Groves (VCG) mechanism: an efficient allocation together with incentivizing VCG payments. We compare this to the communication required to verify the efficient decision rule alone, to assess the overhead imposed by VCG payments. Our characterizations are obtained by leveraging a connection between the VCG outcome and a price equilibrium concept known as universal competitive equilibrium. We consider four related environments within a common framework: the classic single-item setting, the multi-unit setting with decreasing marginal values, the classic assignment problem with unit-demand valuations, and the multi-unit assignment problem with substitutes valuations. We find that the single-unit settings have zero overhead, whereas the multi-unit settings can have significant positive overhead. With multiple units, the naïve VCG protocol that runs several efficient protocols in sequence (one with all agents, and ones with an agent removed, for each agent) is asymptotically optimal for several parameter settings of the number of agents, commodities, and units.

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Cited By

Teng LGeng HYang ZZhu J(2017)A Demand-Based Allocation Mechanism for Virtual MachineArtificial Intelligence and Robotics10.1007/978-3-319-69877-9_7(53-61)Online publication date: 1-Nov-2017
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69877-9_7
Babaioff MBlumrosen LSchapira M(2013)The communication burden of payment determinationGames and Economic Behavior10.1016/j.geb.2012.08.00777:1(153-167)Online publication date: Jan-2013
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geb.2012.08.007
Lamy L(2012)On minimal ascending auctions with payment discountsGames and Economic Behavior10.1016/j.geb.2012.02.00575:2(990-999)Online publication date: Jul-2012
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geb.2012.02.005
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

On the communication requirements of verifying the VCG outcome
1. Applied computing
  1. Law, social and behavioral sciences
    1. Economics
2. Theory of computation
  1. Design and analysis of algorithms

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Published In

cover image ACM Conferences

EC '08: Proceedings of the 9th ACM conference on Electronic commerce

July 2008

332 pages

ISBN:9781605581699

DOI:10.1145/1386790

General Chair:
Lance Fortnow
Northwestern University, USA
,
Program Chairs:
John Riedl
University of Minnesota, USA
,
Tuomas Sandholm
Carnegie-Mellon University, USA

Copyright © 2008 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Published: 08 July 2008

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Cited By

Teng LGeng HYang ZZhu J(2017)A Demand-Based Allocation Mechanism for Virtual MachineArtificial Intelligence and Robotics10.1007/978-3-319-69877-9_7(53-61)Online publication date: 1-Nov-2017
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69877-9_7
Babaioff MBlumrosen LSchapira M(2013)The communication burden of payment determinationGames and Economic Behavior10.1016/j.geb.2012.08.00777:1(153-167)Online publication date: Jan-2013
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geb.2012.08.007
Lamy L(2012)On minimal ascending auctions with payment discountsGames and Economic Behavior10.1016/j.geb.2012.02.00575:2(990-999)Online publication date: Jul-2012
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geb.2012.02.005
Dütting PFischer FParkes DShoham YChen YRoughgarden T(2011)Simplicity-expressiveness tradeoffs in mechanism designProceedings of the 12th ACM conference on Electronic commerce10.1145/1993574.1993632(341-350)Online publication date: 5-Jun-2011
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1993574.1993632
Li MJi HLi X(2009)VCG auction based hierarchical bandwidth sharing scheme for integrated heterogeneous networksProceedings of the 5th International Conference on Wireless communications, networking and mobile computing10.5555/1737966.1738398(3833-3836)Online publication date: 24-Sep-2009
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/1737966.1738398
Li MJi HLi X(2009)VCG Auction Based Hierarchical Bandwidth Sharing Scheme for Integrated Heterogeneous Networks2009 5th International Conference on Wireless Communications, Networking and Mobile Computing10.1109/WICOM.2009.5303321(1-4)Online publication date: Sep-2009
https://doi.org/10.1109/WICOM.2009.5303321
Li ZLi SZhou X(2009)PFMA: Policy-Based Feedback Management Architecture for Wireless Sensor Networks2009 5th International Conference on Wireless Communications, Networking and Mobile Computing10.1109/WICOM.2009.5303052(1-4)Online publication date: Sep-2009
https://doi.org/10.1109/WICOM.2009.5303052
Li W(2009)Wireless Sensor Network Placement Algorithm2009 5th International Conference on Wireless Communications, Networking and Mobile Computing10.1109/WICOM.2009.5302458(1-4)Online publication date: Sep-2009
https://doi.org/10.1109/WICOM.2009.5302458

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