Testing substitutability

John William Hatfield, Nicole Immorlica and Scott Kominers

Games and Economic Behavior, 2012, vol. 75, issue 2, 639-645

Abstract: We provide an algorithm for testing the substitutability of a length-N preference relation over a set of contracts X in time O(|X|3⋅N3). Access to the preference relation is essential for this result: We show that a substitutability-testing algorithm with access only to an agentʼs choice function must make an expected number of queries exponential in |X|. An analogous result obtains when the agentʼs preferences are quasilinear in a numeraire and the algorithm only has access to the agentʼs underlying valuation function.

Keywords: Substitutability; Matching; Communication complexity; Preference elicitation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C62 C78 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:gamebe:v:75:y:2012:i:2:p:639-645

DOI: 10.1016/j.geb.2011.11.007

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