A mechanism for package allocation problems with gross substitutes Articles uri icon

authors

  • Nu¿z, Marina
  • Rafels, Carlos
  • ROBLES JIMENEZ, FRANCISCO JAVIER

publication date

  • March 2020

volume

  • 87

International Standard Serial Number (ISSN)

  • 0304-4068

Electronic International Standard Serial Number (EISSN)

  • 1873-1538

abstract

  • We consider a package allocation problem in which a seller owns many indivisible objects and the rest of the agents, buyers, are interested in packages of these objects. Buyers" valuations satisfy monotonicity and the gross substitutes condition (Kelso and Crawford, 1982). The aim of this paper is to analyze the following mechanism: simultaneously, each buyer requests to the seller a package by announcing how much he would pay for it; once buyers have played, the seller decides the final assignment of packages and the prices, as long as this assignment makes no buyer worse off than with his initial request. The subgame perfect equilibrium outcomes of the mechanism correspond to the Vickrey outcome (Vickrey, 1961) of the market.

keywords

  • gross substitutes; mechanism; subgame perfect equilibria; vickrey outcome