In
mechanism design
Mechanism design is a field in economics and game theory that takes an objectives-first approach to designing economic mechanisms or incentives, toward desired objectives, in strategic settings, where players act rationally. Because it starts a ...
, implementability is a property of a
social choice
Social choice theory or social choice is a theoretical framework for analysis of combining individual opinions, preferences, interests, or welfares to reach a ''collective decision'' or ''social welfare'' in some sense.Amartya Sen (2008). "Soc ...
function. It means that there is an
incentive-compatible mechanism that attains ("implements")
this function. There are several degrees of implementability, corresponding to the different degrees of incentive-compatibility, e.g:
* A function is dominant-strategy implementable if it is attainable by a mechanism which is dominant-strategy-incentive-compatible (also called
strategyproof In game theory, an asymmetric game where players have private information is said to be strategy-proof or strategyproof (SP) if it is a weakly-dominant strategy for every player to reveal his/her private information, i.e. given no information abou ...
).
* A function is Bayesian-Nash implementable if it is attainable by a mechanism which is Bayesian-Nash-incentive-compatible.
See for a recent reference. In some textbooks, the entire field of mechanism design is called Implementation theory.
[Martin J. Osborne & Ariel Rubinstein: A Course in Game Theory (1994).]
References
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Mechanism design