Incentive Compatibility in Two-Stage Repeated Stochastic Games

TL;DR

This paper introduces a new equilibrium concept, DNBE, for two-stage repeated stochastic games, and presents a mechanism that ensures truth-telling as a DNBE, with applications to electricity market design.

Contribution

It proposes the DNBE equilibrium concept and a mechanism that makes truth-telling a DNBE, reducing assumptions about other players' behaviors in complex strategic settings.

Findings

Mechanism guarantees truth-telling as a DNBE

Ensures individual rationality in the game

Maximizes social welfare in the designed mechanism

Abstract

We address the problem of mechanism design for two-stage repeated stochastic games -- a novel setting using which many emerging problems in next-generation electricity markets can be readily modeled. Repeated playing affords the players a large class of strategies that adapt a player's actions to all past observations and inferences obtained therefrom. In other settings such as iterative auctions or dynamic games where a large strategy space of this sort manifests, it typically has an important implication for mechanism design: It may be impossible to obtain truth-telling as a dominant strategy equilibrium. Consequently, in such scenarios, it is common to settle for mechanisms that render truth-telling only a Nash equilibrium, or variants thereof, even though Nash equilibria are known to be poor models of real-world behavior. This is owing to each player having to make overly specific assumptions about the behaviors of the other players to employ their Nash equilibrium strategy, which they may not make. In general, the lesser the burden of speculation in an equilibrium, the more plausible it is that it models real-world behavior. Guided by this maxim, we introduce a new notion of equilibrium called Dominant Strategy Non-Bankrupting Equilibrium (DNBE) which requires the players to make very little assumptions about the behavior of the other players to employ their equilibrium strategy. Consequently, a mechanism that renders truth-telling a DNBE as opposed to only a Nash equilibrium could be quite effective in molding real-world behavior along truthful lines. We present a mechanism for two-stage repeated stochastic games that renders truth-telling a Dominant Strategy Non-Bankrupting Equilibrium. The mechanism also guarantees individual rationality and maximizes social welfare. Finally, we describe an application of the mechanism to design demand response markets.