Beyond Hurwicz: Incentive Compatibility under Informational Decentralization
Theoretical Economics
2026-02-03 v1
Abstract
Achieving incentive compatibility under informational decentralization is impossible within the class of direct and revelation-equivalent mechanisms typically studied in economics and computer science. We show that these impossibility results are conditional by identifying a narrow class of non-revelation-equivalent mechanisms that sustain enforcement by inferring preferences indirectly through parallel, uncorrelatable games.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2602.01790,
title = {Beyond Hurwicz: Incentive Compatibility under Informational Decentralization},
author = {David Lancashire},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2602.01790},
year = {2026}
}
Comments
39 pages, 5 figures, for one-page summary see https://github.com/SaitoTech/papers/blob/main/hurwicz/summary.pdf