Economic Theory: A Theory of Simplicity in Games and Mechanism Design

Abstract: We introduce a general class of simplicity standards that vary the foresight abilities required of agents in extensive-form games. Rather than planning for the entire future of a game, agents are presumed to be able to plan only for those histories they view as simple from their current perspective. Agents may update their so-called strategic plan as the game progresses, and, at any point, for the called-for action to be simply dominant, it must lead to unambiguously better outcomes, no matter what occurs at non-simple histories. We use our approach to simplicity to provide characterizations of simple mechanisms in general social choice environments both with and without trans- fers, including canonical mechanisms such as ascending auctions, posted prices, and serial dictatorship-style mechanisms. As a final application, we explain the widespread popularity of the well-known Random Priority mechanism by characterizing it as the unique mechanism that is efficient, fair, and simple to play.

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