The crawler: Three equivalence results for object (re)allocation problems when preferences are single-peaked

Abstract

For object reallocation problems, if preferences are strict but otherwise unrestricted, the Top Trading Cycles rule (TTC) is the leading rule: It is the only rule satisfying efficiency, individual rationality, and strategy-proofness. However, on the subdomain of single-peaked preferences, Bade (2019) defines a new rule, the “crawler”, which also satisfies these three properties. (i) The crawler selects an allocation by “visiting” agents in a specific order. A natural “dual” rule can be defined by proceeding in the reverse order. Our first theorem states that the crawler and its dual are actually the same. (ii) Single-peakedness of a preference profile may in fact hold for more than one order and its reverse. Our second theorem states that the crawler is invariant to the choice of the order. (iii) For object allocation problems (as opposed to reallocation problems), we define a probabilistic version of the crawler by choosing an endowment profile at random according to a uniform distribution, and applying the original definition. Our third theorem states that this rule is the same as the “random priority rule”.