A Unified Framework for Uniform-Price Resource Allocation Mechanisms

2026-06-04

AI Summary

This work addresses the challenge of balancing social welfare and mechanism simplicity in divisible resource allocation. The authors propose a unified framework that interpolates between the Kelly mechanism and first-price auctions, employing proportional allocation with uniform pricing. This approach retains structural simplicity while strictly improving upon the efficiency guarantees of the Kelly mechanism—achieving full efficiency in certain regimes—and offering revenue guarantees relative to the VCG mechanism. Leveraging mechanism design theory, equilibrium analysis, and interpolation techniques, the proposed family of mechanisms significantly enhances allocative efficiency at equilibrium while maintaining strong revenue performance.

Abstract

Mechanisms for allocating a divisible resource among strategic agents have been widely studied. The prominent paradigm is the proportional (Kelly) mechanism, which elicits a scalar bid per agent, allocates the resource proportionally, and charges payments equal to the bids. Follow-up mechanisms improve social welfare, but sacrifice simplicity by introducing complex allocation rules or unintuitive payments. We introduce a unified framework for designing simple resource allocation mechanisms with proportional-style allocations and uniform pricing. Our framework yields a family of mechanisms that interpolate between the Kelly mechanism and the first-price auction. These mechanisms strictly improve upon Kelly's efficiency guarantees, even achieving full efficiency in equilibrium, while also providing revenue guarantees relative to the VCG mechanism.

Problem

• resource allocation
• uniform pricing
• proportional mechanism
• social welfare
• mechanism design

Innovation

• uniform-price
• proportional allocation
• resource allocation mechanism
• efficiency guarantee
• revenue guarantee