arXivDaily arXiv每日学术速递 周一至周五更新
arXiv 2009.09351cs.GT
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用凸定价抵消市场中的不平等

Counteracting Inequality in Markets via Convex Pricing

Ashish Goel, Benjamin Plaut

摘要:

我们研究的市场机制分配可分割的商品竞争代理与准线性效用。对于\emph{linear}定价(即,商品的成本与购买的数量成正比),第一福利定理指出瓦尔拉斯均衡使代理人估价的总和最大化。这确保了效率,但可能导致个人之间的极端不平等。许多现实世界的市场--特别是水市场--使用\emph{convex}定价,通常称为递增块关税(IBT)。IBT被认为促进平等,但这一说法缺乏理论支持。在本文中,我们研究了一个简单的凸定价规则,并证明了由此产生的均衡保证最大化CES福利函数。此外,定价规则的一个参数直接决定了CES福利函数的实现;通过调整这个参数,社会计划者可以精确地控制公平和效率之间的权衡。我们的结果适用于任何齐次、可微和凹的估值。我们还给出了一个迭代算法来计算这些定价规则,得出一个真实的机制的情况下,一个单一的好,并讨论西比尔攻击。

英文摘要:

We study market mechanisms for allocating divisible goods to competing agents with quasilinear utilities. For \emph{linear} pricing (i.e., the cost of a good is proportional to the quantity purchased), the First Welfare Theorem states that Walrasian equilibria maximize the sum of agent valuations. This ensures efficiency, but can lead to extreme inequality across individuals. Many real-world markets -- especially for water -- use \emph{convex} pricing instead, often known as increasing block tariffs (IBTs). IBTs are thought to promote equality, but there is a dearth of theoretical support for this claim. In this paper, we study a simple convex pricing rule and show that the resulting equilibria are guaranteed to maximize a CES welfare function. Furthermore, a parameter of the pricing rule directly determines which CES welfare function is implemented; by tweaking this parameter, the social planner can precisely control the tradeoff between equality and efficiency. Our result holds for any valuations that are homogeneous, differentiable, and concave. We also give an iterative algorithm for computing these pricing rules, derive a truthful mechanism for the case of a single good, and discuss Sybil attacks.

机构、总结、中文摘要均由AI分析而来,可能存在错误,请以论文正文为准。

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