Top Trading Cycles vs. the Crawler: The Role of Obvious Strategy-Proofness

Aleksei Chernulich, Nobuyuki Hanaki and Yuki Tamura

No 2026_11, Department of Economics Working Papers from Durham University, Department of Economics

Abstract: Obvious strategy-proofness makes truth-telling, in theory, an obvious choice. We experimentally study its role in the object-reallocation problem with single-peaked preferences. We compare two efficient and strategy-proof mechanisms, Top Trading Cycles and the Crawler, under static and gradual implementations. In our experi ment, all four mechanisms generate the same outcome under truth-telling, but only the Gradual Crawler is obviously strategy-proof. The Gradual Crawler achieves significantly higher empirical efficiency than the other mechanisms. By contrast, the Gradual TTC does not outperform the Static TTC, suggesting that gradual implementation alone is not sufficient and that the Gradual Crawler benefits from its stop-or-continue procedure.

Keywords: market design; object reallocation; top trading cycles; the Crawler; obvious strategy-proofness; simplicity; laboratory experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C78 C91 D47 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026-08
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