Computationally feasible VCG mechanisms
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The Price of Truth: Frugality in Truthful Mechanisms
STACS '03 Proceedings of the 20th Annual Symposium on Theoretical Aspects of Computer Science
Coalitional games on graphs: core structure, substitutes and frugality
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Vickrey Prices and Shortest Paths: What is an Edge Worth?
FOCS '01 Proceedings of the 42nd IEEE symposium on Foundations of Computer Science
Truthful Mechanisms for One-Parameter Agents
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Towards a Characterization of Truthful Combinatorial Auctions
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Combinatorial Auctions: A Survey
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On the expected payment of mechanisms for task allocation
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Brief announcement: on the expected overpayment of VCG mechanisms in large networks
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Beyond VCG: Frugality of Truthful Mechanisms
FOCS '05 Proceedings of the 46th Annual IEEE Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science
On certain connectivity properties of the internet topology
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A BGP-based mechanism for lowest-cost routing
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Optimal mechanism design and money burning
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Optimal collusion-resistant mechanisms with verification
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Approximate mechanism design without money
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Theoretical Computer Science
Truthful unsplittable flow for large capacity networks
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A multidimensional procurement auction for trading composite services
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Collusion in VCG path procurement auctions
WINE'10 Proceedings of the 6th international conference on Internet and network economics
Strategic pricing in next-hop routing with elastic demands
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Learning on a budget: posted price mechanisms for online procurement
Proceedings of the 13th ACM Conference on Electronic Commerce
Truthful mechanism design for multidimensional covering problems
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Approximate Mechanism Design without Money
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Strategic Pricing in Next-Hop Routing with Elastic Demands
Theory of Computing Systems
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We consider the problem of selecting a low-cost s - t path in a graph where the edge costs are a secret, known only to the various economic agents who own them. To solve this problem, Nisan and Ronen applied the celebrated Vickrey-Clarke-Groves (VCG) mechanism, which pays a premium to induce the edges so as to reveal their costs truthfully. We observe that this premium can be unacceptably high. There are simple instances where the mechanism pays Θ(n) times the actual cost of the path, even if there is an alternate path available that costs only (1 + ε) times as much. This inspires the frugal path problem, which is to design a mechanism that selects a path and induces truthful cost revelation, without paying such a high premium. This article contributes negative results on the frugal path problem. On two large classes of graphs, including those having three node-disjoint s - t paths, we prove that no reasonable mechanism can always avoid paying a high premium to induce truthtelling. In particular, we introduce a general class of min function mechanisms, and show that all min function mechanisms can be forced to overpay just as badly as VCG. Meanwhile, we prove that every truthful mechanism satisfying some reasonable properties is a min function mechanism. Our results generalize to the problem of hiring a team to complete a task, where the analog of a path in the graph is a subset of the agents constituting a team capable of completing the task.