Mechanism Design without Money
Sylvia Boicheva

Abstract:
Mechanism design is a field that deals with designing algorithms for
making decisions based on the preferences of the agents in such a way
that the outcome is guaranteed to be good for society and the agents
are not incentivised to misreport their preferences. An appropriate
mechanism manages to turn a group of self-interested agents into a
group collectively satisfied with the decision.  Most of the research
on the subject is based on enforcing taxes and subsidies to compensate
agents, but monetary transactions are not always applicable - for
instance, buying and selling organs for transplantation is
illegal. Therefore, it is important to know what can be achieved
without utilizing payments. This thesis provides a broad survey of
both classic and recent results in the field and points out the most
important challenges and achievements.