Obvious manipulations

Peter Troyan and Thayer Morrill

Journal of Economic Theory, 2020, vol. 185, issue C

Abstract: A mechanism is strategy-proof if agents can never profitably manipulate it, in any state of the world; however, not all non-strategy-proof mechanisms are equally easy to manipulate - some are more “obviously” manipulable than others. We propose a formal definition of an obvious manipulation in which agents compare worst cases to worst cases and best cases to best cases. We show that a profitable manipulation is obvious if and only if it can be identified as profitable by a cognitively limited agent who is unable to engage in contingent reasoning, as in Li (2017). Finally, we show that this system of categorization is both tractable and intuitively appealing by classifying common non-strategy-proof mechanisms as either obviously manipulable (OM) or not obviously manipulable (NOM).

Keywords: Obvious strategy-proofness; Incentives; Manipulability; Mechanism design (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C78 D82 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jetheo:v:185:y:2020:i:c:s002205311830629x

DOI: 10.1016/j.jet.2019.104970

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