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Decentralized utilitarian mechanisms for scheduling games

Author

Listed:
  • Cole, Richard
  • Correa, Jose
  • Gkatzelis, Vasillis
  • Mirrokni, Vahab
  • Olver, Neil

Abstract

Game Theory and Mechanism Design are by now standard tools for studying and designing massive decentralized systems. Unfortunately, designing mechanisms that induce socially efficient outcomes often requires full information and prohibitively large computational resources. In this work we study simple mechanisms that require only local information. Specifically, in the setting of a classic scheduling problem, we demonstrate local mechanisms that induce outcomes with social cost close to that of the socially optimal solution. Somewhat counter-intuitively, we find that mechanisms yielding Pareto dominated outcomes may in fact enhance the overall performance of the system, and we provide a justification of these results by interpreting these inefficiencies as externalities being internalized. We also show how to employ randomization to obtain yet further improvements. Lastly, we use the game-theoretic insights gained to obtain a new combinatorial approximation algorithm for the underlying optimization problem.

Suggested Citation

  • Cole, Richard & Correa, Jose & Gkatzelis, Vasillis & Mirrokni, Vahab & Olver, Neil, 2015. "Decentralized utilitarian mechanisms for scheduling games," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 103081, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    • Handle: RePEc:ehl:lserod:103081
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Cited by:

    1. Felipe T. Muñoz & Rodrigo Linfati, 2024. "Bounding the Price of Anarchy of Weighted Shortest Processing Time Policy on Uniform Parallel Machines," Mathematics, MDPI, vol. 12(14), pages 1-12, July.
    2. Ravindran Vijayalakshmi, Vipin & Schröder, Marc & Tamir, Tami, 2024. "Minimizing total completion time with machine-dependent priority lists," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 315(3), pages 844-854.
    3. Tami Tamir, 2023. "Cost-sharing games in real-time scheduling systems," International Journal of Game Theory, Springer;Game Theory Society, vol. 52(1), pages 273-301, March.
    4. Herbert Hamers & Flip Klijn & Marco Slikker, 2019. "Implementation of optimal schedules in outsourcing with identical suppliers," Mathematical Methods of Operations Research, Springer;Gesellschaft für Operations Research (GOR);Nederlands Genootschap voor Besliskunde (NGB), vol. 89(2), pages 173-187, April.
    5. Braat, Jac & Hamers, Herbert & Klijn, Flip & Slikker, Marco, 2019. "A selfish allocation heuristic in scheduling: Equilibrium and inefficiency bound analysis," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 273(2), pages 634-645.
    6. Vasilis Gkatzelis & Konstantinos Kollias & Tim Roughgarden, 2016. "Optimal Cost-Sharing in General Resource Selection Games," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 64(6), pages 1230-1238, December.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    coordination mechanisms; scheduling; price of anarchy;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C72 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Noncooperative Games
    • D71 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Social Choice; Clubs; Committees; Associations
    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design

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