How-to demonstrate Incentive Compatibility in Multi-Attribute Auctions

Abstract. Demonstrating the incentive compatibility of an auction mechanism is always a hard but essential work in auction mechanism design. In this paper we discuss three different approaches to proof or check such property in regard of a multi-attribute auction mechanism: by analyzing well-known sufficient conditions, by mathematical analyzing the rules that govern the mechanism, and by empiri-cally checking the mechanism. Particularly, for dealing with the second approach, we propose a new method which consists on seeking for a counterexample with a constraint solver