On Mechanism Design without Payments for Throughput Maximization

It is well-known that the overall efficiency of a distributed system can suffer if the participating entities seek to maximize their individual performance. Consequently, mechanisms have been designed that force the participants to behave more cooperatively. Most of these game-theoretic solutions rely on payments between participants. Unfortunately, such payments are often cumbersome to implement in practice, especially in dynamic networks and where transaction costs are high. In this paper, we investigate the potential of mechanisms which work without payments. We consider the problem of throughput maximization in multi-channel environments and shed light onto the throughput increase that can be achieved with and without payments. We introduce and analyze two different concepts: the worst-case leverage where we assume that players end up in the worst rational strategy profile, and the average-case leverage where player select a random non-dominated strategy. Our theoretical insights are complemented by simulations.