Robust Pseudo-Markets for Reusable Public Resources

Abstract

We study non-monetary mechanisms for the fair and efficient allocation of reusable public resources. We consider settings where a limited resource is repeatedly shared among a set of agents, each of whom may request to use the resource over multiple consecutive rounds, receiving some utility only if they get to use the resource for the full duration of their request. Such settings are of particular significance in scientific research where large-scale instruments such as electron microscopes, particle colliders, or telescopes are shared between multiple research groups; this model also subsumes and extends existing models of repeated non-monetary allocation where the resource is demanded only for a single round.