Manipulating the Probabilistic Serial Rule

The probabilistic serial (PS) rule is one of the most prominent randomized rules for the assignment problem. It is well-known for its desirable fairness and welfare properties. However, PS is not immune to manipulative behaviour by the agents. We initiate the study of the computational complexity of an agent manipulating the PS rule. We show that computing an expected utility better response is NP-hard. On the other hand, we present a polynomial-time algorithm to compute a lexicographic best response. For the case of two agents, we show that even an expected utility best response can be computed in polynomial time. Our result for the case of two agents relies on an interesting connection with sequential allocation of discrete objects. Categories and Subject Descriptors F.2 [Theory of Computation]: Analysis of Algorithms and Problem Complexity; I.2.11 [Distributed Artificial Intelligence]: Multiagent Systems; J.4 [Computer Applications]: Social and Behavioral Sciences - Economics Gene...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2015
• Where: ATAL
• Authors: Haris Aziz, Serge Gaspers, Simon Mackenzie, Nicholas Mattei, Nina Narodytska, Toby Walsh
• Keywords: ATAL 2015, Intelligent Agents