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A characterization of equilibria in the Groves-Ledyard mechanism. (English) Zbl 1232.91232

Summary: We characterize all interior and boundary equilibria of the Groves-Ledyard mechanism for a large class of economies and determine their stability properties. We show that the mechanism admits three types of equilibria: a symmetric, efficient, stable interior equilibrium, a large set of asymmetric, efficient, unstable, interior equilibria, and a large set of asymmetric, inefficient, stable boundary equilibria. We further show that asymmetric equilibria fail to exist for large values of the punishment parameter or if the message space is bounded sufficiently. The boundary equilibria previously had not been located nor had the instability of the asymmetric equilibria been known. Interestingly, the stability of the symmetric equilibrium rests on two dynamics that individually produce instability.

MSC:

91B18 Public goods
91B52 Special types of economic equilibria
Full Text: DOI

References:

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