Secure implementation experiments: Do strategy-proof mechanisms really work? (English) Zbl 1154.91387
Summary: Strategy-proofness, requiring that truth-telling is a dominant strategy, is a standard concept used in social choice theory. T. Saijo, T. Sjöström and T. Yamato [Secure implementation: Strategy-proof mechanisms reconsidered. Working paper 4-03-1. Department of Economics, Pennsylvania State University] argue that this concept has serious drawbacks. In particular, many strategy-proof mechanisms have a continuum of Nash equilibria, including equilibria other than dominant strategy equilibria. For only a subset of strategy-proof mechanisms do the set of Nash equilibria and the set of dominant strategy equilibria coincide. For example, this double coincidence occurs in the Groves mechanism when preferences are single-peaked. We report experiments using two strategy-proof mechanisms. One of them has a large number of Nash equilibria, but the other has a unique Nash equilibrium. We found clear differences in the rate of dominant strategy play between the two.
MSC:
| 91B14 | Social choice |
Software:
Z-TreeReferences:
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