Sequential Information Elicitation in Multi-Agent Systems release_xpcjzye4f5dbhf4ndm25jj5pu4

by Rann Smorodinsky, Moshe Tennenholtz

Released as a report .

2012  

Abstract

We introduce the study of sequential information elicitation in strategic multi-agent systems. In an information elicitation setup a center attempts to compute the value of a function based on private information (a-k-a secrets) accessible to a set of agents. We consider the classical multi-party computation setup where each agent is interested in knowing the result of the function. However, in our setting each agent is strategic,and since acquiring information is costly, an agent may be tempted not spending the efforts of obtaining the information, free-riding on other agents' computations. A mechanism which elicits agents' secrets and performs the desired computation defines a game. A mechanism is 'appropriate' if there exists an equilibrium in which it is able to elicit (sufficiently many) agents' secrets and perform the computation, for all possible secret vectors.We characterize a general efficient procedure for determining an appropriate mechanism, if such mechanism exists. Moreover, we also address the existence problem, providing a polynomial algorithm for verifying the existence of an appropriate mechanism.
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Type  report
Stage   submitted
Date   2012-07-11
Version   v1
Language   en ?
Number  UAI-P-2004-PG-528-535
arXiv  1207.4165v1
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