English

A conjecture about the efficiency of first price mechanisms

Economics 2015-09-01 v3 Computer Science and Game Theory

Abstract

We present different versions of a conjecture which would express that first price mechanisms never work very badly in a very general class of problems. The definitions include most of the problems where there is a principal (seller) who has the right to exclude others from the game. The exact definitions are motivated by the "first price mechanism" in E Cs: "Efficient Teamwork", but the conjecture is relevant for most auction problems, e.g. for combinatorial auctions.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1508.03651,
  title  = {A conjecture about the efficiency of first price mechanisms},
  author = {Endre Csóka},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1508.03651},
  year   = {2015}
}

Comments

The conjecture is disproved in its original form by the author. The current status of the question is a part of the paper "Efficient Teamwork"