This work initiates the study of cost-sharing mechanisms that, in addition to the usual incentive compatibility conditions, make it disadvantageous for the users to employ pseudonyms. We show that this is possible only if all serviced users pay the same price, which implies that such mechanisms do not exist even for certain subadditive cost functions. In practice, a user can increase her utility by lying in one way (misreport her willingness to pay) or another (misreport her identity). We prove also results for approximately budget-balanced mechanisms. Finally, we consider mechanisms that rely on some kind of "reputation" associated to the pseudonyms and show that they are provably better. © 2009 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.
Pseudonyms in cost-sharing games / Paolo, Penna; Schoppmann, Florian; Silvestri, Riccardo; Peter, Widmayer. - STAMPA. - 5929 LNCS:(2009), pp. 256-267. (Intervento presentato al convegno 5th International Workshop on Internet and Network Economics, WINE 2009 tenutosi a Rome nel 14 December 2009 through 18 December 2009) [10.1007/978-3-642-10841-9_24].
Pseudonyms in cost-sharing games
SILVESTRI, RICCARDO;
2009
Abstract
This work initiates the study of cost-sharing mechanisms that, in addition to the usual incentive compatibility conditions, make it disadvantageous for the users to employ pseudonyms. We show that this is possible only if all serviced users pay the same price, which implies that such mechanisms do not exist even for certain subadditive cost functions. In practice, a user can increase her utility by lying in one way (misreport her willingness to pay) or another (misreport her identity). We prove also results for approximately budget-balanced mechanisms. Finally, we consider mechanisms that rely on some kind of "reputation" associated to the pseudonyms and show that they are provably better. © 2009 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
