A new ex-ante efficiency criterion and implications for the probabilistic serial mechanism

Battal Dogan, Serhat Doğan and Kemal Yildiz

Journal of Economic Theory, 2018, vol. 175, issue C, 178-200

Abstract: We introduce and analyze an efficiency criterion for probabilistic assignment of objects, when only ordinal preference information is available. This efficiency criterion is based on the following domination relation: a probabilistic assignment dominates another assignment if it is ex-ante efficient for a strictly larger set of utility profiles consistent with the ordinal preferences. We provide a simple characterization of this domination relation. We revisit an extensively studied assignment mechanism, the Probabilistic Serial mechanism (Bogomolnaia and Moulin, 2001), which always chooses a “fair” assignment. We show that the Probabilistic Serial assignment may be dominated by another fair assignment. We provide conditions under which the serial assignment is undominated among fair assignments.

Keywords: Ex-ante efficiency; Probabilistic assignment; Fairness; Probabilistic serial mechanism (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C60 C71 C78 D61 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jetheo:v:175:y:2018:i:c:p:178-200

DOI: 10.1016/j.jet.2018.01.011

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