First-passage percolation on a width-2 strip and the path cost in a VCG auction

Authors:
Abraham Flaxman;David Gamarnik;Gregory B. Sorkin
Affiliations:
Department of Mathematical Sciences, Carnegie Mellon University Pittsburgh, PA;MIT Sloan School of Management Cambridge, MA;Department of Mathematical Sciences, IBM T.J. Watson Research Center, Yorktown Heights, NY
Venue:
WINE'06 Proceedings of the Second international conference on Internet and Network Economics
Year:
2006

Citing 13
Cited 2

Algorithmic mechanism design (extended abstract)

STOC '99 Proceedings of the thirty-first annual ACM symposium on Theory of computing
The ζ (2) limit in the random assignment problem

Random Structures & Algorithms
Frugal path mechanisms

SODA '02 Proceedings of the thirteenth annual ACM-SIAM symposium on Discrete algorithms
A BGP-based mechanism for lowest-cost routing

Proceedings of the twenty-first annual symposium on Principles of distributed computing
On Certain Connectivity Properties of the Internet Topology

FOCS '03 Proceedings of the 44th Annual IEEE Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science
Lower and Upper Bounds for the Time Constant of First-Passage Percolation

Combinatorics, Probability and Computing
FIRST-PASSAGE PERCOLATION ON THE RANDOM GRAPH

Probability in the Engineering and Informational Sciences
Frugality in path auctions

SODA '04 Proceedings of the fifteenth annual ACM-SIAM symposium on Discrete algorithms
On the expected payment of mechanisms for task allocation: [extended abstract]

EC '04 Proceedings of the 5th ACM conference on Electronic commerce
True costs of cheap labor are hard to measure: edge deletion and VCG payments in graphs

Proceedings of the 6th ACM conference on Electronic commerce
Brief announcement: on the expected overpayment of VCG mechanisms in large networks

Proceedings of the twenty-fourth annual ACM symposium on Principles of distributed computing
Maximum weight independent sets and matchings in sparse random graphs. Exact results using the local weak convergence method

Random Structures & Algorithms
Probability: Theory and Examples

Probability: Theory and Examples

Average-Case Analyses of Vickrey Costs

APPROX '09 / RANDOM '09 Proceedings of the 12th International Workshop and 13th International Workshop on Approximation, Randomization, and Combinatorial Optimization. Algorithms and Techniques
First-passage percolation with exponential times on a ladder

Combinatorics, Probability and Computing

Quantified Score

Hi-index	0.00

Visualization

Abstract

We study both the time constant for first-passage percolation, and the Vickery-Clarke-Groves (VCG) payment for the shortest path, on a width-2 strip with random edge costs. These statistics attempt to describe two seemingly unrelated phenomena, arising in physics and economics respectively: the first-passage percolation time predicts how long it takes for a fluid to spread through a random medium, while the VCG payment for the shortest path is the cost of maximizing social welfare among selfish agents. However, our analyses of the two are quite similar, and require solving (slightly different) recursive distributional equations. Using Harris chains, we can characterize distributions, not just expectations.