Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/234910 
Year of Publication: 
2020
Series/Report no.: 
ISER Discussion Paper No. 1097
Publisher: 
Osaka University, Institute of Social and Economic Research (ISER), Osaka
Abstract: 
We consider the problem of allocating multiple units of an indivisible object among agents and collecting payments. Each agent can receive multiple units of the object, and his (consumption) bundle is a pair of the units he receives and his payment. An agent's preference over bundles may be non-quasi-linear, which accommodates income effects or soft budget constraints. We show that the generalized Vickrey rule is the only rule satisfying efficiency, strategy-proofness, individual rationality, and no subsidy for losers on rich domains with nondecreasing marginal valuations. We further show that if a domain is minimally rich and includes an arbitrary preference exhibiting both decreasing marginal valuations and a positive income effect, then no rule satisfies the same four properties. Our results suggest that in non-quasi-linear environments, the design of an efficient multi-unit auction mechanism is possible only when agents have nondecreasing marginal valuations.
Subjects: 
Efficiency
Strategy-proofness
Non-quasi-linear preferences
Nondecreasing marginal valuations
Decreasing marginal valuations
Constant marginal valuations
Multi-unit auctions
JEL: 
D44
D47
D71
D82
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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