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UID:www.tcs.tifr.res.in/event/1642
DTSTAMP:20251223T034850Z
SUMMARY:The Robustness of Top Trading Cycles: Uniqueness in the Probabilist
 ic Setup
DESCRIPTION:Speaker: Soumyarup Sadhukhan (IIT Kanpur)\n\nAbstract: \nThe as
 signment problem with initial endowments (the "housing market") is a corne
 rstone of mechanism design. In the deterministic setting\, Ma (1994) famou
 sly characterized the Top Trading Cycles (TTC) rule as the unique mechanis
 m that satisfies strategy-proofness\, Pareto efficiency\, and individual r
 ationality.\nIn this talk\, I explore whether expanding the domain to prob
 abilistic assignments allows for new\, perhaps fairer\, mechanisms. While 
 randomization often bypasses impossibility results in mechanism design\, w
 e show a striking "collapse" in the housing market. We prove that if agent
 s have deterministic initial endowments\, TTC remains the only admissible 
 rule\, even under the weakest notions of strategy-proofness and efficiency
  extended to lotteries. I will detail this characterization\, discuss some
  known impossibility results for probabilistic endowments for more than th
 ree agents\, and conclude with some open problems in the design of exchang
 e mechanisms.\nShort Bio:\nDr. Soumyarup Sadhukhan is an Assistant Profess
 or in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at the Indian Institute
  of Technology (IIT) Kanpur. His primary research interests lie at the int
 ersection of mathematics and economics\, specifically in Game Theory\, Mec
 hanism Design\, and Choice Theory.\nDr. Sadhukhan earned his PhD from the 
 Economic Research Unit of the Indian Statistical Institute (ISI)\, Kolkata
 \, where his thesis focused on probabilistic mechanism design. Prior to jo
 ining IIT Kanpur\, he served as a C.V. Raman Post-doctoral Fellow at the D
 epartment of Computer Science and Automation\, Indian Institute of Science
  (IISc)\, Bangalore.\nHis current work explores the axiomatic foundations 
 of resource allocation\, with a focus on probabilistic assignment problems
  and fair division. His research has been published in reputable journals\
 , including the Journal of Economic Theory\, Journal of Mathematical Econo
 mics\, and Mathematics of Operations Research.\n
URL:https://www.tcs.tifr.res.in/web/events/1642
DTSTART;TZID=Asia/Kolkata:20251223T160000
DTEND;TZID=Asia/Kolkata:20251223T170000
LOCATION:via Zoom in A201
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