19 September 2008, Computational Social Choice Seminar, Krzysztof Apt

Abstract

We describe a structured system for distributed mechanism design. It consists of a sequence of layers. The lower layers deal with the operations relevant for distributed computing only, while the upper layers are concerned only with communication among players, including broadcasting and multicasting, and distributed decision making. Specific applications are realized as instances of the top layer.

In our approach the players dynamically form a network in which they know neither their neighbours nor the size of the network and interact to jointly take decisions. This design supports fault-tolerance, prevents manipulations and makes it possible to implement distributed policing. The system is implemented in Java. We illustrate its flexibility by discussing a number of implemented examples. (Joint work with Farhad Arbab and Huiye Ma.)

For more information, see http://www.illc.uva.nl/~ulle/seminar/ or contact Ulle Endriss (ulle.endriss at uva.nl).