IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/wop/safiwp/99-07-049.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Efficiency and Equilibrium in Task Allocation Economics with Hierarchical Dependencies

Author

Listed:
  • William E. Walsh
  • Michael P. Wellman

Abstract

We analyze economic efficiency and equilibrium properties in decentralized task allocation problems involving hierarchical dependencies and resource contention. We bound the inefficiency of a type of approximate equilibrium in proportion to the number of agents and the bidding parameters in a particular market protocol. This protocol converges to an approximate equilibrium with respect to all agents, except those which may acquire unneeded inputs. We introduce a decommitment phase to allow such agents to decommit from their input contracts. Experiments indicate that the augmented market protocol produces highly efficient allocations on average.

Suggested Citation

  • William E. Walsh & Michael P. Wellman, 1999. "Efficiency and Equilibrium in Task Allocation Economics with Hierarchical Dependencies," Working Papers 99-07-049, Santa Fe Institute.
    • Handle: RePEc:wop:safiwp:99-07-049
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Paul R. Milgrom, 1985. "Auction Theory," Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers 779, Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics, Yale University.
    2. Cheng, John Q & Wellman, Michael P, 1998. "The WALRAS Algorithm: A Convergent Distributed Implementation of General Equilibrium Outcomes," Computational Economics, Springer;Society for Computational Economics, vol. 12(1), pages 1-24, August.
    3. Michael H. Rothkopf & Aleksandar Pekev{c} & Ronald M. Harstad, 1998. "Computationally Manageable Combinational Auctions," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 44(8), pages 1131-1147, August.
    4. Satterthwaite, Mark A. & Williams, Steven R., 1989. "Bilateral trade with the sealed bid k-double auction: Existence and efficiency," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 48(1), pages 107-133, June.
    5. Peter R. Wurman & Michael P. Wellman, 1999. "Equilibrium Prices in Bundle Auctions," Working Papers 99-09-064, Santa Fe Institute.
    6. Demange, Gabrielle & Gale, David & Sotomayor, Marilda, 1986. "Multi-Item Auctions," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 94(4), pages 863-872, August.
    7. R. Preston McAfee & John McMillan, 1996. "Analyzing the Airwaves Auction," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 10(1), pages 159-175, Winter.
    8. Gul, F. & Stacchetti, E., 1997. "Walrasian Equilibrium Without Complementarities," Papers 97-03, Michigan - Center for Research on Economic & Social Theory.
    9. Bikhchandani, Sushil & Mamer, John W., 1997. "Competitive Equilibrium in an Exchange Economy with Indivisibilities," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 74(2), pages 385-413, June.
    10. McAfee, R Preston & McMillan, John, 1987. "Auctions and Bidding," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 25(2), pages 699-738, June.
    11. S.J. Rassenti & V.L. Smith & R.L. Bulfin, 1982. "A Combinatorial Auction Mechanism for Airport Time Slot Allocation," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 13(2), pages 402-417, Autumn.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Wellman, Michael P. & Walsh, William E. & Wurman, Peter R. & MacKie-Mason, Jeffrey K., 2001. "Auction Protocols for Decentralized Scheduling," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 35(1-2), pages 271-303, April.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Wurman, Peter R. & Wellman, Michael P. & Walsh, William E., 2001. "A Parametrization of the Auction Design Space," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 35(1-2), pages 304-338, April.
    2. Lawrence M. Ausubel & Peter Cramton & Paul Milgrom, 2012. "System and Method for a Hybrid Clock and Proxy Auction," Papers of Peter Cramton 12acmhc, University of Maryland, Department of Economics - Peter Cramton, revised 2012.
    3. Wellman, Michael P. & Walsh, William E. & Wurman, Peter R. & MacKie-Mason, Jeffrey K., 2001. "Auction Protocols for Decentralized Scheduling," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 35(1-2), pages 271-303, April.
    4. Jinpeng Ma, 1997. "English Auctions and Walrasian Equilibria with Multiple Objects: a dynamic approach," Departmental Working Papers 199702, Rutgers University, Department of Economics.
    5. Peter R. Wurman & Michael P. Wellman, 1999. "Equilibrium Prices in Bundle Auctions," Working Papers 99-09-064, Santa Fe Institute.
    6. Proano, Ruben A. & Jacobson, Sheldon H. & Zhang, Wenbo, 2012. "Making combination vaccines more accessible to low-income countries: The antigen bundle pricing problem," Omega, Elsevier, vol. 40(1), pages 53-64, January.
    7. Sulin Ba & Jan Stallaert & Andrew B. Whinston, 2001. "Optimal Investment in Knowledge Within a Firm Using a Market Mechanism," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 47(9), pages 1203-1219, September.
    8. Park, Sunju & Rothkopf, Michael H., 2005. "Auctions with bidder-determined allowable combinations," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 161(2), pages 399-415, March.
    9. Peter Cramton, 1997. "The FCC Spectrum Auctions: An Early Assessment," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 6(3), pages 431-495, September.
    10. Ming Fan & Jan Stallaert & Andrew B. Whinston, 2003. "Decentralized Mechanism Design for Supply Chain Organizations Using an Auction Market," Information Systems Research, INFORMS, vol. 14(1), pages 1-22, March.
    11. Jawad Abrache & Teodor Crainic & Michel Gendreau & Monia Rekik, 2007. "Combinatorial auctions," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 153(1), pages 131-164, September.
    12. Nicolas Gruyer & Nathalie Lenoir, 2003. "Auctioning airport slots (?)," Economics Working Papers 01, LEEA (air transport economics laboratory), ENAC (french national civil aviation school).
    13. Mishra, Debasis & Parkes, David C., 2007. "Ascending price Vickrey auctions for general valuations," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 132(1), pages 335-366, January.
    14. Nicolas Gruyer & Nathalie Lenoir, 2003. "Auctioning airport slots (?)," Post-Print hal-01021718, HAL.
    15. Lawrence M. Ausubel & Peter Cramton & R. Preston McAfee & John McMillan, 1997. "Synergies in Wireless Telephony: Evidence from the Broadband PCS Auctions," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 6(3), pages 497-527, September.
    16. Sven de Vries & Rakesh Vohra, 2000. "Combinatorial Auctions: A Survey," Discussion Papers 1296, Northwestern University, Center for Mathematical Studies in Economics and Management Science.
    17. Peter Cramton, 2002. "Spectrum Auctions," Papers of Peter Cramton 01hte, University of Maryland, Department of Economics - Peter Cramton, revised 16 Jul 2001.
    18. Alexander Teytelboym & Shengwu Li & Scott Duke Kominers & Mohammad Akbarpour & Piotr Dworczak, 2021. "Discovering Auctions: Contributions of Paul Milgrom and Robert Wilson," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 123(3), pages 709-750, July.
    19. Sayee Srinivasan, 2002. "Trading Portfolios Electronically – An Experimental Approach," Netnomics, Springer, vol. 4(1), pages 39-71, March.
    20. Zhiling Guo & Gary J. Koehler & Andrew B. Whinston, 2012. "A Computational Analysis of Bundle Trading Markets Design for Distributed Resource Allocation," Information Systems Research, INFORMS, vol. 23(3-part-1), pages 823-843, September.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Supply chain formation; competitive equilibrium; distributed systems;
    All these keywords.

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wop:safiwp:99-07-049. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Thomas Krichel (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/epstfus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.