Generalized welfare lower bounds and strategyproofness in sequencing problems

Abstract

In an environment with private information, we study the class of sequencing problems with welfare lower bounds. The “generalized welfare lower bound” represents some of the lower bounds that have been previously studied in the literature. Every agent is offered a protection in the form of a minimum guarantee on their utilities. We provide a necessary and sufficient condition to identify an outcome efficient and strategyproof mechanism that satisfies generalized welfare lower bound. We then characterize the entire class of mechanisms that satisfy outcome efficiency, strategyproofness and generalized welfare lower bound. These are termed as “relative pivotal mechanisms”. Our paper proposes relevant theoretical applications namely; ex-ante initial order, identical costs bound and expected cost bound. We also give insights on the issues of feasibility and/or budget balance.