Obvious Strategy-proofness with Respect to a Partition

TL;DR

This paper introduces a new concept of obvious strategy-proofness based on agent partitions, generalizing existing notions and analyzing its properties and implications in voting scenarios.

Contribution

It defines and studies a new form of obvious strategy-proofness relative to agent partitions, bridging the gap between strategy-proofness and obvious strategy-proofness.

Findings

Establishes two key properties of the new notion

Applies the concept to a simple voting problem with two alternatives

Provides insights into the structure of strategy-proof mechanisms

Abstract

We define and study obvious strategy-proofness with respect to a partition of the set of agents. It encompasses strategy-proofness as a special case when the partition is the coarsest one and obvious strategy-proofness when the partition is the finest. For any partition, it falls between these two extremes. We establish two general properties of this new notion and apply it to the simple anonymous voting problem with two alternatives and strict preferences.