No Screening is More Efficient with Multiple Objects
This provides an efficient system for scheduling vaccinations in pandemics, though it is incremental as it builds on existing mechanism design principles.
The paper tackles the problem of efficiently allocating multiple heterogeneous objects by maximizing residual surplus, finding that no-screening mechanisms like serial dictatorship perform better as goods variety increases, with numerical validation in general environments.
We study efficient mechanism design for allocating multiple heterogeneous objects. The aim is to maximize the residual surplus, the total value generated from an allocation minus the costs of screening. We discover a robust trend indicating that no-screening mechanisms, such as serial dictatorship with exogenous priority order, tend to perform better as the variety of goods increases. We analyze the underlying reasons by characterizing asymptotically efficient mechanisms in a stylized environment. We also apply an automated mechanism design approach to numerically derive efficient mechanisms and validate the trend in general environments. Building on these implications, we propose the register-invite-book system (RIB) as an efficient system for scheduling vaccinations against pandemic diseases.