Prior-free dynamic allocation under limited liability

Sylvain Chassang () and Samuel Kapon ()
Additional contact information
Sylvain Chassang: Department of Economics, Princeton University
Samuel Kapon: Department of Economics, New York University

Theoretical Economics, 2022, vol. 17, issue 3

Abstract: A principal seeks to efficiently allocate a productive public resource to a number of possible users. Vickrey-Clarke-Groves (VCG) mechanisms provide a detail-free way to do so provided users have deep pockets. In practice however, users may have limited resources. We study a dynamic allocation problem in which participants have limited liability: transfers are made ex post, and only if the productive efforts of participants are successful. We show that it is possible to approximate the performance of the pivot VCG mechanism using limited liability detail-free mechanisms that selectively ignore reports from participants who cannot make their promised payments. A complementary use of cautiousness and forgiveness achieves approximate renegotiation-proofness. We emphasize the use of prior-free online optimization techniques to approximate aggregate incentive properties of the pivot mechanism.

Keywords: Dynamic allocation; renegotiation-proofness; lending; limited liability; VCG; approachability; online optimization; cautiousness; forgiveness (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D82 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022-07-14
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://econtheory.org/ojs/index.php/te/article/viewFile/20221109/34319/1008 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:the:publsh:4575

Access Statistics for this article

Theoretical Economics is currently edited by Simon Board, Todd D. Sarver, Juuso Toikka, Rakesh Vohra, Pierre-Olivier Weill

More articles in Theoretical Economics from Econometric Society
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Martin J. Osborne ().