Truthful germs are contagious: A local-to-global characterization of truthfulness

Aaron Archer and Robert Kleinberg

Games and Economic Behavior, 2014, vol. 86, issue C, 340-366

Abstract: We study the question of which social choice functions from an abstract type space to a set of outcomes are truthful, i.e., implementable by truthful mechanisms, when utilities are quasi-linear. For convex domains, our main theorem characterizes truthful social choice functions as those satisfying two properties: local weak monotonicity and vortex-freeness. The first of these constrains the function values at any two sufficiently proximal points, while the second asserts that its line integrals around sufficiently small triangular loops must vanish.

Keywords: Truthful mechanism design; Implementation theory; Incentive compatibility; Local-to-global characterization; Multi-dimensional types; Cyclic monotonicity; Weak monotonicity; Vortex-freeness; Truthful stitching; Rochet's theorem; Stokes's theorem; Saks–Yu theorem; First-order logic; Orthogonal polynomials (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D82 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (14)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:gamebe:v:86:y:2014:i:c:p:340-366

DOI: 10.1016/j.geb.2014.01.004

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