220 research outputs found
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Distributed Implementations of Vickrey-Clarke-Groves Mechanisms
Mechanism design (MD) provides a useful method to implement outcomes with desirable properties in systems with self-interested computational agents. One drawback, however, is that computation is implicitly centralized in MD theory, with a central planner taking all decisions.We consider distributed implementations, in which the outcome is determined by the self-interested agents themselves. Clearly this introduces new opportunities for manipulation.We propose a number of principles to guide the distribution of computation, focusing in particular on Vickrey-Clarke-Groves mechanisms for implementing outcomes that maximize total value across agents. Our solutions bring the complete implementation into an ex post Nash equilibrium.Engineering and Applied Science
A System for Distributed Mechanisms: Design, Implementation and Applications
We describe here a structured system for distributed mechanism design
appropriate for both Intranet and Internet applications. In our approach the
players dynamically form a network in which they know neither their neighbours
nor the size of the network and interact to jointly take decisions. The only
assumption concerning the underlying communication layer is that for each pair
of processes there is a path of neighbours connecting them. This allows us to
deal with arbitrary network topologies.
We also discuss the implementation of this system which consists of a
sequence of layers. The lower layers deal with the operations that implement
the basic primitives of distributed computing, namely low level communication
and distributed termination, while the upper layers use these primitives to
implement high level communication among players, including broadcasting and
multicasting, and distributed decision making.
This yields a highly flexible distributed system whose specific applications
are realized as instances of its top layer. This design is implemented in Java.
The system supports at various levels fault-tolerance and includes a
provision for distributed policing the purpose of which is to exclude
`dishonest' players. Also, it can be used for repeated creation of dynamically
formed networks of players interested in a joint decision making implemented by
means of a tax-based mechanism. We illustrate its flexibility by discussing a
number of implemented examples.Comment: 36 pages; revised and expanded versio
A Faithful Distributed Implementation of Dual Decomposition and Average Consensus Algorithms
We consider large scale cost allocation problems and consensus seeking
problems for multiple agents, in which agents are suggested to collaborate in a
distributed algorithm to find a solution. If agents are strategic to minimize
their own individual cost rather than the global social cost, they are endowed
with an incentive not to follow the intended algorithm, unless the tax/subsidy
mechanism is carefully designed. Inspired by the classical
Vickrey-Clarke-Groves mechanism and more recent algorithmic mechanism design
theory, we propose a tax mechanism that incentivises agents to faithfully
implement the intended algorithm. In particular, a new notion of asymptotic
incentive compatibility is introduced to characterize a desirable property of
such class of mechanisms. The proposed class of tax mechanisms provides a
sequence of mechanisms that gives agents a diminishing incentive to deviate
from suggested algorithm.Comment: 8 page
A Distributed Platform for Mechanism Design
We describe a structured system for distributed mechanism design. It consists
of a sequence of layers. The lower layers deal with the operations relevant for
distributed computing only, while the upper layers are concerned only with
communication among players, including broadcasting and multicasting, and
distributed decision making. This yields a highly flexible distributed system
whose specific applications are realized as instances of its top layer.
This design supports fault-tolerance, prevents manipulations and makes it
possible to implement distributed policing. The system is implemented in Java.
We illustrate it by discussing a number of implemented examples.Comment: 6 pages. To appear in the Proc. of International Conference on
Computational Intelligence for Modelling, Control and Automation, IEEE
Societ
K-Implementation
This paper discusses an interested party who wishes to influence the behavior
of agents in a game (multi-agent interaction), which is not under his control.
The interested party cannot design a new game, cannot enforce agents' behavior,
cannot enforce payments by the agents, and cannot prohibit strategies available
to the agents. However, he can influence the outcome of the game by committing
to non-negative monetary transfers for the different strategy profiles that may
be selected by the agents. The interested party assumes that agents are
rational in the commonly agreed sense that they do not use dominated
strategies. Hence, a certain subset of outcomes is implemented in a given game
if by adding non-negative payments, rational players will necessarily produce
an outcome in this subset. Obviously, by making sufficiently big payments one
can implement any desirable outcome. The question is what is the cost of
implementation? In this paper we introduce the notion of k-implementation of a
desired set of strategy profiles, where k stands for the amount of payment that
need to be actually made in order to implement desirable outcomes. A major
point in k-implementation is that monetary offers need not necessarily
materialize when following desired behaviors. We define and study
k-implementation in the contexts of games with complete and incomplete
information. In the latter case we mainly focus on the VCG games. Our setting
is later extended to deal with mixed strategies using correlation devices.
Together, the paper introduces and studies the implementation of desirable
outcomes by a reliable party who cannot modify game rules (i.e. provide
protocols), complementing previous work in mechanism design, while making it
more applicable to many realistic CS settings
Computational Mechanism Design: A Call to Arms
Game theory has developed powerful tools for analyzing decision making in systems with multiple autonomous actors. These tools, when tailored to computational settings, provide a foundation for building multiagent software systems. This tailoring gives rise to the field of computational mechanism design, which applies economic principles to computer systems design
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Specification Faithfulness in Networks with Rational Nodes
It is useful to prove that an implementation correctly follows a specification. But even with a provably correct implementation, given a choice, would a node choose to follow it? This paper explores how to create distributed system specifications that will be faithfully implemented in networks with rational nodes, so that no node will choose to deviate. Given a strategyproof centralized mechanism, and given a network of nodes modeled as having rational-manipulation faults, we provide a proof technique to establish the incentive-, communication-, and algorithm-compatibility properties that guarantee that participating nodes are faithful to a suggested specification. As a case study, we apply our methods to extend the strategyproof interdomain routing mechanism proposed by Feigenbaum, Papadimitriou, Sami, and Shenker (FPSS) [7], defining a faithful implementation.Engineering and Applied Science
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