Fair imposition

We introduce a new notion, related to auctions and mechanism design, called fair imposition. In this setting a center wishes to fairly and efficiently allocate tasks among a set of agents, not knowing their cost structure. As in the study of auctions, the main abstacle to overcome is the self-interest of the agents, which will in general cause them to hide their true costs. Unlike the auction setting, however, here the center has the power to impose arbitrary behavior on the agents, and furthermore wishes to distribute the cost as fairly as possible among them. We define the problem precisely, present solution criteria for these problems (the central of which is called k-efficiency), and present both positive results (in the form of concrete protocols) and negative results (in the form of impossibility theorems) concerning these criteria.

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