Manipulation-resistant facility location mechanisms for ZV-line graphs

TL;DR

This paper introduces a new class of graphs called ZV-line graphs and presents a strategy-proof, Pareto optimal, and efficiently computable facility location mechanism for these graphs, unifying previous research in the area.

Contribution

The paper defines ZV-line graphs and provides a novel, manipulation-resistant facility location mechanism applicable to this class, with polynomial-time computation and desirable social choice properties.

Findings

Mechanism is strategy-proof, abstention-proof, and false-name-proof.

Mechanism is Pareto optimal and can be computed in polynomial time.

Unifies and extends previous results on facility location on discrete graphs.

Abstract

In many real-life scenarios, a group of agents needs to agree on a common action, e.g., on the location for a public facility, while there is some consistency between their preferences, e.g., all preferences are derived from a common metric space. The facility location problem models such scenarios and it is a well-studied problem in social choice. We study mechanisms for facility location on graphs, which are resistant to manipulations (strategy-proof, abstention-proof, and false-name-proof) by both individuals and coalitions and are efficient (Pareto optimal). We define a family of graphs, ZV-line graphs, and show a general facility location mechanism for these graphs which satisfies all these desired properties. Moreover, we show that this mechanism can be computed in polynomial time, the mechanism is anonymous, and it can equivalently be defined as the first Pareto optimal location according to some predefined order. Our main result, the ZV-line graphs family and the mechanism we present for it, unifies the few current works in the literature of false-name-proof facility location on discrete graphs, including all the preliminary (unpublished) works we are aware of. Finally, we discuss some generalizations and limitations of our result for problems of facility location on other structures.