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New variable-population paradoxes for resource allocation

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  • William Thomson

Abstract

We identify previously unnoticed ways in which agents can strategically distort allocation rules, by affecting the set of “active” agents. (i) An agent withdraws with his endowment. (ii) He gives control of his endowment to someone else and withdraws. (iii) He invites someone in and let him use some of his endowment. (iv) He pre-delivers to some other agent the net trade that the rule would assign to that second agent if that second agent had participated. In (i) and (ii), he and his co-conspirator may end up controlling resources that allow them to reach higher welfare levels than they otherwise would. In (iii) and (iv), he may end up with a bundle that he prefers to the one he would have been assigned had he not engaged in the manipulation. We show that (i) the Walrasian rule is not “withdrawing-proof”, nor “endowments-merging-proof, nor “endowments-splitting-proof”, but that it is “pre-delivery-proof”, and that (ii) canonical selections from the egalitarian-equivalence-in-trades solutions satisfy none of the properties. Copyright Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2014

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  • William Thomson, 2014. "New variable-population paradoxes for resource allocation," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 42(2), pages 255-277, February.
  • Handle: RePEc:spr:sochwe:v:42:y:2014:i:2:p:255-277
    DOI: 10.1007/s00355-013-0731-5
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    Cited by:

    1. Nanyang Bu & Siwei Chen & William Thomson, 2014. "Merging and splitting endowments in object assignment problems," RCER Working Papers 587, University of Rochester - Center for Economic Research (RCER).
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    3. Fujinaka, Yuji & Wakayama, Takuma, 2018. "Endowments-swapping-proof house allocation," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 111(C), pages 187-202.
    4. William Thomson, 2024. "Constrained dictatorial rules are subject to variable-population paradoxes," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 97(2), pages 299-310, September.

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