296,698 research outputs found
Multidimensional communication mechanisms: cooperative and conflicting designs
This paper investigates optimal communication mechanisms with a two-dimensional policy space and no monetary transfers. Contrary to the one-dimensional setting, when a single principal controls two activities undertaken by his agent (cooperative design), the optimal communication mechanism never exhibits any pooling and the agent's ideal policies are never chosen. However, when the conflicts of interests between the agent and the principal on each dimension of the agent's activity are close to each other, simpler mechanisms that generalize those optimal in the one-dimensional case perform quite well. These simple mechanisms exhibit much pooling. When each activity of the agent is controlled by a different principal (non-cooperative design) and enters separately into the agent's utility function, optimal mechanisms under private communication take again the form of simple delegation sets, exactly as in the one-dimensional case. When instead the agent finds some benefits in coordinating actions, a one-sided contractual externality arises between principals under private communication. Under public communication instead, there does not exist any pure strategy Nash equilibrium with continuous and piecewise differentiable communication mechanisms. Relaxing the commitment ability of the principals restores equilibrium existence under public communication and yields partitional equilibria. Compared with private communication, public communication generates discipline or subversion effects among principals depending on the profile of their respective biases with respect to the agent's ideal policies.communication ; delegation ; mechanism design ; multi-dimensional decision ; common agency
Reducing Revenue to Welfare Maximization: Approximation Algorithms and other Generalizations
It was recently shown in [http://arxiv.org/abs/1207.5518] that revenue
optimization can be computationally efficiently reduced to welfare optimization
in all multi-dimensional Bayesian auction problems with arbitrary (possibly
combinatorial) feasibility constraints and independent additive bidders with
arbitrary (possibly combinatorial) demand constraints. This reduction provides
a poly-time solution to the optimal mechanism design problem in all auction
settings where welfare optimization can be solved efficiently, but it is
fragile to approximation and cannot provide solutions to settings where welfare
maximization can only be tractably approximated. In this paper, we extend the
reduction to accommodate approximation algorithms, providing an approximation
preserving reduction from (truthful) revenue maximization to (not necessarily
truthful) welfare maximization. The mechanisms output by our reduction choose
allocations via black-box calls to welfare approximation on randomly selected
inputs, thereby generalizing also our earlier structural results on optimal
multi-dimensional mechanisms to approximately optimal mechanisms. Unlike
[http://arxiv.org/abs/1207.5518], our results here are obtained through novel
uses of the Ellipsoid algorithm and other optimization techniques over {\em
non-convex regions}
Multi-Objective Design Optimization of the Leg Mechanism for a Piping Inspection Robot
This paper addresses the dimensional synthesis of an adaptive mechanism of
contact points ie a leg mechanism of a piping inspection robot operating in an
irradiated area as a nuclear power plant. This studied mechanism is the leading
part of the robot sub-system responsible of the locomotion. Firstly, three
architectures are chosen from the literature and their properties are
described. Then, a method using a multi-objective optimization is proposed to
determine the best architecture and the optimal geometric parameters of a leg
taking into account environmental and design constraints. In this context, the
objective functions are the minimization of the mechanism size and the
maximization of the transmission force factor. Representations of the Pareto
front versus the objective functions and the design parameters are given.
Finally, the CAD model of several solutions located on the Pareto front are
presented and discussed.Comment: Proceedings of the ASME 2014 International Design Engineering
Technical Conferences \& Computers and Information in Engineering Conference,
Buffalo : United States (2014
Improved Revenue Bounds for Posted-Price and Second-Price Mechanisms
We study revenue maximization through sequential posted-price (SPP)
mechanisms in single-dimensional settings with buyers and independent but
not necessarily identical value distributions. We construct the SPP mechanisms
by considering the best of two simple pricing rules: one that imitates the
revenue optimal mchanism, namely the Myersonian mechanism, via the taxation
principle and the other that posts a uniform price. Our pricing rules are
rather generalizable and yield the first improvement over long-established
approximation factors in several settings. We design factor-revealing
mathematical programs that crisply capture the approximation factor of our SPP
mechanism. In the single-unit setting, our SPP mechanism yields a better
approximation factor than the state of the art prior to our work (Azar,
Chiplunkar & Kaplan, 2018). In the multi-unit setting, our SPP mechanism yields
the first improved approximation factor over the state of the art after over
nine years (Yan, 2011 and Chakraborty et al., 2010). Our results on SPP
mechanisms immediately imply improved performance guarantees for the equivalent
free-order prophet inequality problem. In the position auction setting, our SPP
mechanism yields the first higher-than approximation factor. In eager
second-price (ESP) auctions, our two simple pricing rules lead to the first
improved approximation factor that is strictly greater than what is obtained by
the SPP mechanism in the single-unit setting.Comment: Accepted to Operations Researc
Reducing symmetry in topology optimization of two-dimensional porous phononic crystals
In this paper we present a comprehensive study on the multi-objective
optimization of two-dimensional porous phononic crystals (PnCs) in both square
and triangular lattices with the reduced topology symmetry of the unit-cell.
The fast non-dominated sorting-based genetic algorithm II is used to perform
the optimization, and the Pareto-optimal solutions are obtained. The results
demonstrate that the symmetry reduction significantly influences the optimized
structures. The physical mechanism of the optimized structures is analyzed.
Topology optimization combined with the symmetry reduction can discover new
structures and offer new degrees of freedom to design PnC-based devices.
Especially, the rotationally symmetrical structures presented here can be
utilized to explore and design new chiral metamaterials.Comment: 24 pages, 11 figures in AIP Advances 201
- …