Proceedings of the 22nd ACM Conference on Economics and Computation最新文献

{"title":"Robust Performance Evaluation","authors":"Ashwin Kambhampati","doi":"10.1145/3465456.3467529","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1145/3465456.3467529","url":null,"abstract":"This paper considers a moral hazard in teams model in which a principal knows that the agents she compensates are identical and independent, but does not know all of the actions they can take. In the face of this uncertainty, the principal chooses a symmetric contract that yields her the highest worst-case expected profit. It is shown, counterintuitively, that any such contract exhibitsjoint performance evaluation --- each agent's pay is increasing in the performance of the other--- and isnonlinear in team output. Hence, when robustness is a concern, nonlinear team-based incentive schemes--- such as team bonuses and employee stock options--- are justified. The analysis highlights a fundamentally new channel leading to the optimality of joint performance evaluation. The full paper can be found at the following link: https://ashwinkambhampati.github.io/RobustPerformance_EC.pdf.","PeriodicalId":395676,"journal":{"name":"Proceedings of the 22nd ACM Conference on Economics and Computation","volume":"216 12 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-07-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126037122","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Screening with Frames","authors":"Franz Ostrizek, Denis Shishkin","doi":"10.1145/3465456.3467552","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1145/3465456.3467552","url":null,"abstract":"We analyze screening with frame-dependent valuations. The optimal extensive form has a simple three-stage structure, using changes of framing (high-low-high) to induce dynamic inconsistency and thereby relax incentive compatibility constraints.","PeriodicalId":395676,"journal":{"name":"Proceedings of the 22nd ACM Conference on Economics and Computation","volume":"32 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-07-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123469828","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Effect of Privacy Regulation on the Data Industry: Empirical Evidence from GDPR","authors":"Guy Aridor, Yeon-Koo Che, Tobias Salz","doi":"10.1145/3465456.3467543","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1145/3465456.3467543","url":null,"abstract":"This paper studies the effects of the EU's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) on the ability of firms to collect consumer data, identify consumers over time, accrue revenue via online advertising, and predict their behavior. We utilize a novel dataset that spans many different firms in the online travel industry that allows us to observe consumer visits, purchases, advertisements, and the output of a commercially used algorithm that predicts consumer behavior. We make use of a difference-in-differences analysis that exploits the geographic reach of GDPR. We find a 12.5% drop in observed consumers as a result of GDPR, but at the same time that remaining set of consumers is more persistently identifiable. We provide suggestive evidence that this is driven by a selected set of consumers who substitute from pre-existing privacy means towards those offered as part of GDPR. This substitution affects the ability to predict consumer behavior and preferences as well as improves the ability of advertisers to measure the effectiveness of advertising. In sum, this differential use of privacy tools leads to an increase in the average value of remaining consumers to advertisers, offsetting some of the losses from consumers that opt-out. Our results highlight the externalities that consumer privacy decisions have both on other consumers and for firms.","PeriodicalId":395676,"journal":{"name":"Proceedings of the 22nd ACM Conference on Economics and Computation","volume":"5 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-07-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129549777","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Indivisible Mixed Manna: On the Computability of MMS+PO Allocations","authors":"Rucha Kulkarni, R. Mehta, Setareh Taki","doi":"10.1145/3465456.3467553","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1145/3465456.3467553","url":null,"abstract":"In this paper we study the problem of finding fair and efficient allocations of a mixed manna, i.e., a setM of discrete items that are goods/chores, among a set N of agents with additive valuations. We note that a mixed manna allows an item to be a good (positively valued) for some agents, and a chore (negatively valued) for others, and thereby strictly generalizes the extensively studied goods (chores) manna. To measure fairness and efficiencywe consider the popular and well studied notions of maximin-share (MMS) and Pareto optimality (PO) respectively. AnMMS allocation is one where every agent gets at least herMMS value. However, [6] showed that an MMS allocation may not always exist. This prompted a series of works on the efficient computation of α-MMS allocations, where every agent gets at least α (1/α) times her MMS value for a goods (chores) manna, for progressively better α ∈ [0, 1]; the best factor known so far is α = (3/4 + 1/(12n)) by Garg and Taki [2] for n ≥ 5 agents for goods, and 9/11 for chores [5]. No such results are known for the mixed manna. Even for the goods (chores) manna, no work has explored the PO guarantee in addition toMMS, to the best of our knowledge. In this paper, we first show that, for any fixed α ∈ (0, 1], an α-MMS allocation may not always exist; in contrast, non-existence with a goods manna is known for α close to one. This rules out efficient computation for any fixed α, and naturally raises the following problem. Problem of Interest. Design an efficient algorithm to find an α-MMS + PO allocation for the best possible α , i.e., the maximum α ∈ (0, 1] for which it exists. This exact problem is intractable: In the case of identical agents, an (α = 1)-MMS allocation exists by definition. However, finding one is known to be NP-hard for a goods manna. On the positive side, a polynomial-time approximation scheme (PTAS) is known for this case; given a constant ε ∈ (0, 1], the algorithm finds a (1 − ε)-MMS allocation in polynomial time. Guaranteeing PO in addition adds to the complexity, since even checking if a given allocation is PO is coNP-hard. In light of these results, we ask,","PeriodicalId":395676,"journal":{"name":"Proceedings of the 22nd ACM Conference on Economics and Computation","volume":"7 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-07-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132849398","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Parallel Lotteries: Insights from Alaskan Hunting Permit Allocation","authors":"N. Arnosti, T. Randolph","doi":"10.1145/3465456.3467562","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1145/3465456.3467562","url":null,"abstract":"We analyze the parallel lottery, which is used to allocate hunting permits in the state of Alaska. Each participant is given tickets to distribute among lotteries for different types of items. Participants who win multiple items receive their favorite, and new winners are drawn from the lotteries with unclaimed items. When supply is scarce, equilibrium outcomes of parallel lotteries approximate a competitive equilibrium from equal incomes (CEEI), which is Pareto efficient. When supply is moderate, parallel lotteries exhibit two sources of inefficiency. First, some agents may benefit from trading probability shares. Second, outcomes may be \"wasteful\": agents may receive nothing even if acceptable items remain unallocated. We bound both sources of inefficiency, and show that each is eliminated by giving applicants a suitable number of tickets k: trades are never beneficial when $k = 1$, and waste is eliminated as k approaches infinity. In addition, we show that the wastefulness of the k-ticket parallel lottery has some benefits: agents with strong preferences may prefer parallel lottery outcomes to those of any nonwasteful envy-free mechanism. These agents prefer small values of k, while agents with weak preferences prefer large values of k. Together, these results suggest that the k-ticket parallel lottery performs well under most circumstances, and may be suitable for other settings where items are rationed.","PeriodicalId":395676,"journal":{"name":"Proceedings of the 22nd ACM Conference on Economics and Computation","volume":"9 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-07-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126871724","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"How Flexible is that Functional Form?: Measuring the Restrictiveness of Theories","authors":"D. Fudenberg, Wayne Yuan Gao, Annie Liang","doi":"10.1145/3465456.3467556","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1145/3465456.3467556","url":null,"abstract":"We propose a new way to quantify the restrictiveness of an economic model, based on how well the model fits simulated, hypothetical data sets. The data sets are drawn at random from a distribution that satisfies some application-dependent content restrictions (such as that people prefer more money to less). Models that can fit almost all hypothetical data well are not restrictive. To illustrate our approach, we evaluate the restrictiveness of popular behavioral models in two experimental settings---certainty equivalents and initial play---and explain how restrictiveness reveals new insights about each of the models.","PeriodicalId":395676,"journal":{"name":"Proceedings of the 22nd ACM Conference on Economics and Computation","volume":"10 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-07-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122134783","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Classification of Priorities Such That Deferred Acceptance is OSP Implementable","authors":"Clayton Thomas","doi":"10.1145/3465456.3467579","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1145/3465456.3467579","url":null,"abstract":"We study the strategic simplicity of stable matching mechanisms where one side has fixed preferences, termed priorities. Specifically, we ask which priorities are such that the strategyproofness of deferred acceptance (DA) can be recognized by agents unable to perform contingency reasoning, that is, when does DA have an obviously strategyproof (OSP) implementation (Li, 2017)? We answer this question by completely characterizing those priorities for which DA is OSP implementable. This solves an open problem of Ashlagi and Gonczarowski, 2018. We find that when DA is OSP implementable, priorities are either acyclic (Ergin, 2002), a restrictive condition which allows priorities to only differ on only two agents at a time, or contain an extremely limited cyclic pattern where all priority lists are identical except for exactly two. We conclude that, for stable matching mechanisms, the tension between understandability (in the sense of OSP) and expressiveness of priorities is very high.","PeriodicalId":395676,"journal":{"name":"Proceedings of the 22nd ACM Conference on Economics and Computation","volume":"15 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-07-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122612161","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Δ-Substitute Preferences and Equilibria with Indivisibilities","authors":"Thành Nguyen, R. Vohra","doi":"10.1145/3465456.3467575","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1145/3465456.3467575","url":null,"abstract":"Gross substitutes for quasi-linear preferences is characterized by the single improvement property, which says an agent can improve upon a sub-optimal bundle by adding or dropping a single item, or exchanging one item for another. We extend this notion in two ways: by allowing for non-quasi-linear preferences and the exchange of up to Delta items. Our results connect the improvement property with the geometry of the choice correspondence. We derive prices at which the excess demand for each good is at most Delta-1 and provide applications to the design of pseudo-markets for allocating indivisible resources.","PeriodicalId":395676,"journal":{"name":"Proceedings of the 22nd ACM Conference on Economics and Computation","volume":"42 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-07-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124142782","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Contracts with Private Cost per Unit-of-Effort","authors":"T. Alon, Paul Dütting, Inbal Talgam-Cohen","doi":"10.1145/3465456.3467651","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1145/3465456.3467651","url":null,"abstract":"Economic theory distinguishes between principal-agent settings in which the agent has a private type and settings in which the agent takes a hidden action. Many practical problems, however, involve aspects of both. For example, brand X may seek to hire an influencer Y to create sponsored content to be posted on social media platform Z. This problem has a hidden action component (the brand may not be able or willing to observe the amount of effort exerted by the influencer), but also a private type component (influencers may have different costs per unit-of-effort). This \"effort\" and \"cost per unit-of-effort\" perspective naturally leads to a principal-agent problem with hidden action and single-dimensional private type, which generalizes both the classic principal-agent hidden action model of contract theory a la Grossmann and Hart [1986] and the (procurement version) of single-dimensional mechanism design a la Myerson [1983]. A natural goal in this model is to design an incentive-compatible contract, which consist of an allocation rule that maps types to actions, and a payment rule that maps types to payments for the stochastic outcomes of the chosen action. Our main contribution is an LP-duality based characterization of implementable allocation rules for this model, which applies to both discrete and continuous types. This characterization shares important features of Myerson's celebrated characterization result, but also departs from it in significant ways. We present several applications, including a polynomial-time algorithm for finding the optimal contract with a constant number of actions. This in sharp contrast to recent work on hidden action problems with multi-dimensional private information, which has shown that the problem of computing an optimal contract for constant numbers of actions is APX-hard.","PeriodicalId":395676,"journal":{"name":"Proceedings of the 22nd ACM Conference on Economics and Computation","volume":"14 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-07-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125383141","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Allocation with Weak Priorities and General Constraints","authors":"Young-San Lin, Hai Nguyen, Thành Nguyen, K. Altinkemer","doi":"10.1145/3465456.3467581","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1145/3465456.3467581","url":null,"abstract":"With COVID 19 prevalent in the USA and the world, efficient social distance seating became an option for sports venues. The social distancing constraint requires six feet between individuals when the game has live audiences. Depending on the seats' dimensions, this would translate to a certain number of empty rows and empty seats in a row between the individuals. As a result, it is not possible to seat all ticket holders with safe social distancing. Hence, it necessitates reassigning spectators to games. An important feature of this problem is that season tickets are grouped by family, and only a safe distance between two different families needs to be maintained. Members of the same family can sit next to each other. Therefore, a large family needs fewer empty seats per person to maintain social distancing. A football season has about six home games. If priority is given to larger families for all the games, then many people can watch the live games, but the outcome will be highly unfair. Striking a good balance between efficiency and fairness is a nontrivial task. We model this as a resource allocation problem. Its novelty is the combination of three features: complex resource constraints, weak priority ranking over agents, and ordinal preferences over bundles of resources. We develop a mechanism based on a new concept called Competitive Stable Equilibrium (CSE). It has several attractive properties, unifies two different frameworks of one-sided and two-sided markets, and extends existing methods to richer environments. CSE is an extension of competitive equilibrium with endowed budgets that accommodates weak priorities. In particular, an agent only needs to pay for a resource if he belongs to the last tier among the agents currently consuming the resource. Furthermore, the price is positive only if the resource constraint binds: a market clearing condition as in a competitive equilibrium. Thus, if agents are endowed with equal budgets, then a CSE is a stable and envy-free outcome, which is both fair and Pareto optimal when the resource constraints are capacity constraints. Moreover, a CSE when agents are given a different budget corresponds to a tie-breaking rule among agents of the same tier. Tie-breaking rules can improve efficiency, especially when resource constraints are complex. Our framework also allows for an alternative and more flexible tie-breaking rule by giving agents different budgets. Furthermore, when agents consume a bundle of goods, it allows agents to \"distribute\" their tie-breaking budget over different resources. We illustrate this in the application of assigning seats in sports venues and compare our method with other tie-breaking alternatives. We empirically apply our mechanism to reassign season tickets to families in the presence of social distancing. Our simulation results show that our method outperforms the existing ones in both efficiency and fairness measures. However, CSE need not exist because of two different r","PeriodicalId":395676,"journal":{"name":"Proceedings of the 22nd ACM Conference on Economics and Computation","volume":"9 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-07-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128351238","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}