A tractable multiple agents protocol and algorithm for resource allocation under price rigidities

Abstract

In many resource allocation problems, economy efficiency must be taken into consideration together with social equality, and price rigidities are often made according to some economic and social needs. We investigate the computational issues of dynamic mechanisms for selling multiple indivisible objects under price rigidities. We propose a multiple agents protocol and algorithm with polynomial time complexity that can achieve the over-demanded sets of items, and then introduce a dynamic mechanism with rationing to discover constrainedWalrasian equilibria under price rigidities in polynomial time. We also address the computation of buyers' expected profits and items' expected prices, and discuss strategical issues in the sense of expected profits.