Title: Investigating the Characteristics of One-Sided Matching Mechanisms Under Various Preferences and Risk Attitudes,
Abstract: One-sided matching mechanisms are fundamental for assigning a set of
indivisible objects to a set of self-interested agents when monetary transfers
are not allowed. Two widely-studied randomized mechanisms in multiagent
settings are the Random Serial Dictatorship (RSD) and the Probabilistic Serial
Rule (PS). Both mechanisms require only that agents specify ordinal preferences
and have a number of desirable economic and computational properties. However,
the induced outcomes of the mechanisms are often incomparable and thus there
are challenges when it comes to deciding which mechanism to adopt in practice.
In this paper, we first consider the space of general ordinal preferences and
provide empirical results on the (in)comparability of RSD and PS. We analyze
their respective economic properties under general and lexicographic
preferences. We then instantiate utility functions with the goal of gaining
insights on the manipulability, efficiency, and envyfreeness of the mechanisms
under different risk-attitude models. Our results hold under various preference
distribution models, which further confirm the broad use of RSD in most
practical applications.