Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/150127 
Authors: 
Year of Publication: 
2009
Citation: 
[Journal:] Theoretical Economics [ISSN:] 1555-7561 [Volume:] 4 [Issue:] 2 [Publisher:] The Econometric Society [Place:] New York, NY [Year:] 2009 [Pages:] 165-197
Publisher: 
The Econometric Society, New York, NY
Abstract: 
We establish that the fraction of preference profiles for which the random serial dictatorship allocation is ordinally efficient vanishes for allocation problems with many object types. We consider also a probabilistic setting where in expectation agents have moderately similar preferences reflecting varying popularity across objects. In this setting we show that the probability that the random serial dictatorship mechanism is ordinally efficient converges to zero as the number of object types becomes large. We provide results with similarly negative content for allocation problems with many objects of each type. One corollary is that ordinal efficiency is a strict refinement of ex-post efficiency at most preference profiles.
Subjects: 
Allocation problem
ex-post efficiency
ordinal efficiency
probabilistic serial
random serial dictatorship
JEL: 
D6
Creative Commons License: 
cc-by-nc Logo
Document Type: 
Article

Files in This Item:
File
Size





Items in EconStor are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.