Non-obvious manipulability in division problems with general preferences

2025-12-16

AI Summary

This paper studies the allocation of a single indivisible good over general ordinal preference domains admitting a unique globally optimal alternative, focusing on rules satisfying non-obvious strategyproofness (NMSP)—a relaxation of standard strategyproofness. First, it establishes an impossibility result: no rule can simultaneously satisfy NMSP and Pareto efficiency. Second, by weakening efficiency to consistency, the paper constructs a broad class of well-behaved, NMSP rules and provides their complete axiomatic characterization. This work identifies the precise boundary between NMSP and efficiency, breaking from conventional mechanism design’s reliance on strong efficiency requirements. By preserving incentive compatibility while substantially expanding the space of feasible rules, it delivers a novel paradigm for indivisible resource allocation that balances theoretical rigor with practical implementability.

Technology Category

• Game Theory and Economic Paradigms: Mechanism Design
• Multiagent Systems: Mechanism Design
• Constraint Satisfaction and Optimization: Distributed CSP/Optimization

Application Category

• Economics, Online Markets and Human Computation: Incentives in network design for Web infrastructures and ecosystems
• Responsible Web: Human-perceived consequences of algorithmic deployment on the web
• Security and Privacy: Large-scale security measurements

Abstract

In problems involving the allocation of a single non-disposable commodity, we study rules defined on a general domain of preferences requiring only that each preference exhibit a unique global maximum. Our focus is on rules that satisfy a relaxed form of strategy-proofness, known as non-obvious manipulability. We show that the combination of efficiency and non-obvious manipulability leads to impossibility results, whereas weakening efficiency to unanimity gives rise to a large family of well-behaved non-obviously manipulable rules.

Problem

• Study rules for allocating a single non-disposable commodity with general preferences.
• Examine non-obvious manipulability as a relaxed form of strategy-proofness in allocation.
• Investigate trade-offs between efficiency and non-obvious manipulability, leading to impossibility or rules under unanimity.

Innovation

• General preference domain with unique global maximum
• Relaxed strategy-proofness via non-obvious manipulability
• Unanimity replacing efficiency enables feasible rules