On Truthful Introductions

On Low-Envy Truthful Allocations

We study the problem of allocating a set of indivisible items to players having additive utility functions over the items. We consider allocations in which no player envies the bundle of items allocated to the other players too much. We present a simple proof that deterministic truthful allocations do not minimize envy by characterizing the truthful mechanisms for two players and two items. Als...

Truthful Surveys

We consider the problem of truthfully sampling opinions of a population for statistical analysis purposes, such as estimating the population distribution of opinions. To obtain accurate results, the surveyor must incentivize individuals to report unbiased opinions. We present a rewarding scheme to elicit opinions that are representative of the population. In contrast with the related literature...

On Truthful Mechanisms for Maximin Share Allocations

We study a fair division problem with indivisible items, namely the computation of maximin share allocations. Given a set of n players, the maximin share of a single player is the best she can guarantee to herself, if she would partition the items in any way she prefers, into n bundles, and then receive her least desirable bundle. The objective then is to find an allocation, so that each player...

Introductions to special issue on ESWEEK 2011

On Designing Truthful Mechanisms for Online Scheduling

We study the online version of the scheduling problem Q||Cmax involving selfish agents, considered by Archer and Tardos in [FOCS 2001], where jobs must be scheduled on m related machines, each of them owned by a different selfish agent. We present a general technique for transforming competitive online algorithms for Q||Cmax into truthful online mechanisms with a small loss of competitiveness. ...