Prior-free online mechanisms for queueing with arrivals

Sambuddha Ghosh (), Yan Long () and Manipushpak Mitra
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Sambuddha Ghosh: Shanghai University of Finance and Economics
Yan Long: Huazhong University of Science and Technology

Economic Theory, 2021, vol. 72, issue 2, No 10, 700 pages

Abstract: Abstract Agents from a finite population arrive at various discrete times, and exit after they use a server for one period each. Each agent has a per-period cost of queueing, which constitutes his private information. Among direct mechanisms that are prior-free, i.e. independent of distributions of arrivals and costs, and online, i.e. charge only those present in the system, we characterize the class of dynamically strategy-proof mechanisms with least total waiting cost. The budget is balanced eventually under a mild condition on the arrival sequence, while a canonical mechanism that achieves budget balance in each period is also characterized under a stronger condition.

Keywords: Queueing with arrivals; Prior-free mechanism design; Online mechanism design; online VCG mechanism; Dynamically strategy-proof; Budget balance (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C44 C78 D47 D82 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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DOI: 10.1007/s00199-020-01308-7

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