A conjecture about the efficiency of first price mechanisms

Abstract

We present different versions of a conjecture which would express that first price mechanisms never work very badly in a very general class of problems. The definitions include most of the problems where there is a principal (seller) who has the right to exclude others from the game. The exact definitions are motivated by the "first price mechanism" in E Cs: "Efficient Teamwork", but the conjecture is relevant for most auction problems, e.g. for combinatorial auctions.

arXiv commentThe conjecture is disproved in its original form by the author. The current status of the question is a part of the paper "Efficient Teamwork"