Essays on efficiency, fairness, and incentives in resource allocation
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- This dissertation consists of three essays on efficiency, fairness, and incentives in resource allocation. Chapter 2 studies allocation problems with and without monetary transfers, such as multi-unit auctions, school choice, and course assignment. For this class of problems, we introduce a generalized random priority mechanism with budgets (GRP). This mechanism is always ex post incentive compatible and feasible. Moreover, as the market grows large, this mechanism can approximate any incentive compatible mechanism in the corresponding continuum economy. In particular, GRP can be used to approximate efficient and envy-free allocations, while preserving incentive compatibility and feasibility. Chapter 3, a joint work with Daisuke Hirata, Onur Kesten, Morimitsu Kurino, and M. Utku Ünver, studies the problem of assigning a set of indivisible objects to a set of agents when monetary transfers are not allowed and agents reveal only ordinal preferences, but random assignments are possible. We offer two characterizations of the probabilistic serial mechanism, which assigns lotteries over objects. We show that it is the only mechanism satisfying non-wastefulness and ordinal fairness and the only mechanism satisfying sd-efficiency, sd-envy-freeness, and weak invariance or weak truncation robustness (where "sd" stands for first-order stochastic dominance). Chapter 4 studies equilibrium selection and stability in the generalized second price auction used by major search engines to sell advertisement slots. We assume that a bidder who bids randomly (noise bidder) participates in the auction with a small probability. The main finding is that the VCG-equivalent equilibria, considered plausible in this literature, do not survive in this model, even as the probability that the noise bidder appears converges to 0. An efficient equilibrium is essentially unique if it exists. This equilibrium is further justified in a model without the noise bidder as a unique limit of efficient trembling-hand perfect equilibria in which all bidders make mistakes in similar ways. However, the noise-bidder model may not have any efficient equilibrium, or even any pure strategy equilibrium. Simulations indicate that the set of parameters for which no pure strategy equilibrium exists occupies almost 99% of the parameter space if six or more positions are auctioned.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic; electronic resource; remote |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Publication date | 2013 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Associated with | Hashimoto, Tadashi |
|---|---|
| Associated with | Stanford University, Graduate School of Business |
| Primary advisor | Ostrovsky, Michael |
| Primary advisor | Skrzypacz, Andrzej, 1973- |
| Thesis advisor | Ostrovsky, Michael |
| Thesis advisor | Skrzypacz, Andrzej, 1973- |
| Thesis advisor | Wilson, Robert, 1937- |
| Advisor | Wilson, Robert, 1937- |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Tadashi Hashimoto. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Graduate School of Business. |
| Thesis | Thesis (Ph.D.)--Stanford University, 2013. |
| Location | https://purl.stanford.edu/bm934dq8527 |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2013 by Tadashi Hashimoto
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