Object Allocation via Swaps along a Social Network

Object Allocation via Swaps along a Social Network

Laurent Gourvès, Julien Lesca, Anaëlle Wilczynski

Proceedings of the Twenty-Sixth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence
Main track. Pages 213-219. https://doi.org/10.24963/ijcai.2017/31

This article deals with object allocation where each agent receives a single item. Starting from an initial endowment, the agents can be better off by exchanging their objects. However, not all trades are likely because some participants are unable to communicate. By considering that the agents are embedded in a social network, we propose to study the allocations emerging from a sequence of simple swaps between pairs of neighbors in the network. This model raises natural questions regarding (i) the reachability of a given assignment, (ii) the ability of an agent to obtain a given object, and (iii) the search of Pareto-efficient allocations. We investigate the complexity of these problems by providing, according to the structure of the social network, polynomial and NP-complete cases.
Keywords:
Agent-based and Multi-agent Systems: Coordination and cooperation
Agent-based and Multi-agent Systems: Social Choice Theory