156 research outputs found
Characterizations of Pareto-efficient, fair, and strategy-proof allocation rules in queueing problems
A set of agents with possibly different waiting costs have to receive the same service one after the other. Efficiency requires to maximize total welfare. Equity requires to at least treat equal agents equally. One must form a queue, set up monetary transfers to compensate agents having to wait, and not a priori arbitrarily exclude agents from positions. As one may not know agents’ waiting costs, they may have no incentive to reveal them. We identify the only rule satisfying Pareto-efficiency, a weak equity axiom as equal treatment of equals in welfare or symmetry, and strategy-proofness. It satisfies stronger axioms, as no-envy and anonymity. Further, its desirability extends to related problems. To obtain these results, we prove that even non-single-valued rules satisfy Pareto-efficiency of queues and strategy-proofness if and only if they select Pareto-efficient queues and set transfers in the spirit of Groves (1973). This holds in other problems, provided the domain of quasi-linear preferences is rich enough.queueing problems, efficiency, fairness, strategy-proofness
A characterization of the Vickrey rule in slot allocation problems
We study the slot allocation problem where agents have quasi-linear single-peaked preferences over slots and identify the rules satisfying efficiency, strategy-proofness, and individual rationality. Since the quasi-linear single-peaked domain is not connected, the famous characterization of the Vickrey rule in terms of Holmström (1979)'s three properties cannot be applied. However, we are able to establish that on the quasi-linear single-peaked domain, the Vickrey rule is still the only rule satisfying efficiency, strategy-proofness, and individual rationality
Service capacity pooling in M/G/1 service systems
International audienceWe study the cost-sharing problem among independent service providers in a service capacity pooling system. The effective improvement of such pooling system can be achieved by reducing the resource idleness in case of congestion. In this paper, we model both the service provider and the cooperative coalition as a single server queue. We attempt to answer the following questions: (i) which coalition strategy should be used; and (ii) which allocation rule should be selected in order to maintain the stability of the coalition? In particular, we consider the service pooling with a fixed service capacity for M/G/1 service systems. The benefit of the pooling system is due to the shortened waiting queue in the overall system. We develop the corresponding cooperative game with transferable utility, and analyze the core allocations. Although it is difficult to express a core allocation explicitly for the game, we prove the non-emptiness of the core. We give a reasonable expression of Equal Profit Method to distribute the cost for our game, and investigate a number of cost allocation rules under three typical situations to evaluate the gain of the service pooling strategy for each service provider. The numerical results show that the cost allocation rule proposed gives a reasonable cost-sharing result considering the contribution of each participant
The Pareto principle of optimal inequality
inequality aversion, Pareto principle, uncertainty, time consistency
Efficiency in Multiple-Type Housing Markets
We consider multiple-type housing markets (Moulin, 1995), which extend
Shapley-Scarf housing markets (Shapley and Scarf, 1974) from one dimension to
higher dimensions. In this model, Pareto efficiency is incompatible with
individual rationality and strategy-proofness (Konishi et al., 2001).
Therefore, we consider two weaker efficiency properties: coordinatewise
efficiency and pairwise efficiency. We show that these two properties both (i)
are compatible with individual rationality and strategy-proofness, and (ii)
help us to identify two specific mechanisms. To be more precise, on various
domains of preference profiles, together with other well-studied properties
(individual rationality, strategy-proofness, and non-bossiness), coordinatewise
efficiency and pairwise efficiency respectively characterize two extensions of
the top-trading-cycles mechanism (TTC): the coordinatewise top-trading-cycles
mechanism (cTTC) and the bundle top-trading-cycles mechanism (bTTC). Moreover,
we propose several variations of our efficiency properties, and we find that
each of them is either satisfied by cTTC or bTTC, or leads to an impossibility
result (together with individual rationality and strategy-proofness).
Therefore, our characterizations can be primarily interpreted as a
compatibility test: any reasonable efficiency property that is not satisfied by
cTTC or bTTC could be considered incompatible with individual rationality and
strategy-proofness. For multiple-type housing markets with strict preferences,
our characterization of bTTC constitutes the first characterization of an
extension of the prominent TTC mechanis
Study of a Dynamic Cooperative Trading Queue Routing Control Scheme for Freeways and Facilities with Parallel Queues
This article explores the coalitional stability of a new cooperative control
policy for freeways and parallel queuing facilities with multiple servers.
Based on predicted future delays per queue or lane, a VOT-heterogeneous
population of agents can agree to switch lanes or queues and transfer payments
to each other in order to minimize the total cost of the incoming platoon. The
strategic interaction is captured by an n-level Stackelberg model with
coalitions, while the cooperative structure is formulated as a partition
function game (PFG). The stability concept explored is the strong-core for PFGs
which we found appropiate given the nature of the problem. This concept ensures
that the efficient allocation is individually rational and coalitionally
stable. We analyze this control mechanism for two settings: a static vertical
queue and a dynamic horizontal queue. For the former, we first characterize the
properties of the underlying cooperative game. Our simulation results suggest
that the setting is always strong-core stable. For the latter, we propose a new
relaxation program for the strong-core concept. Our simulation results on a
freeway bottleneck with constant outflow using Newell's car-following model
show the imputations to be generally strong-core stable and the coalitional
instabilities to remain small with regard to users' costs.Comment: 3 figures. Presented at Annual Meeting Transportation Research Board
2018, Washington DC. Proof of conjecture 1 pendin
Adding independent risks in an insurance portfolio: which shape for the insurers’ preferences?
Many papers in the litterature have adopted the expected utility paradigm to analyze insurance decisions. Insurance companies manage policies by growing, by adding independent risks. Even if adding risks generally ultimately decreases the probability of insolvency, the impact on the insurer's expected utility is less clear. Indeed, it is not true that the risk aversion toward the additional loss generated by a new policy included in an insurance portfolio is a decreasing function of the number of contracts already underwritten (i.e. the "fallacy of large numbers"). In this paper, it is shown that most commonly used utility functions do not necessarily positively value the aggregation of independent risks so that they are not éligible for insurers. This casts some doubt about the conclusions drawn in the papers postulating such completely monotonic utilities for guiding insurers' choices. Finally, it is shown that the sufficient conditions for adding risks that can be found in the litterature need to be refined by restricting the domain of definition of the insurer's utility function.expected utility, compensating premium, prudence, temperance
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