Obvious strategyproofness (OSP) is an appealing concept as it allows to maintain incentive compatibility even in the presence of agents that are not fully rational, i.e., those who struggle with contingent reasoning (Li in Am Econ Rev 107(11):3257–3287, 2017). However, it has been shown to impose some limitations, e.g., no OSP mechanism can return a stable matching (Ashlagi and Gonczarowski in J Econ Theory 177:405–425, 2018). We here deepen the study of the limitations of OSP mechanisms by looking at their approximation guarantees for basic optimization problems paradigmatic of the area, i.e., machine scheduling and facility location. We prove a number of bounds on the approximation guarantee of OSP mechanisms, which show that OSP can come at a significant cost. However, rather surprisingly, we prove that OSP mechanisms can return optimal solutions when they use monitoring—a novel mechanism design paradigm that introduces a mild level of scrutiny on agents’ declarations (Kovacs et al. in WINE 9470:398–412, 2015).

中文翻译：

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OSP机制的近似保证：以机器调度和设施位置为例

明显的策略证明 (OSP) 是一个吸引人的概念，因为它允许即使在不完全理性的代理存在的情况下也能保持激励兼容性，即那些与条件推理作斗争的人（Li in Am Econ Rev 107(11):3257–3287 , 2017)。然而，它已被证明会施加一些限制，例如，没有 OSP 机制可以返回稳定匹配（Ashlagi 和 Gonczarowski 在 J Econ Theory 177:405–425, 2018）。我们在此通过查看 OSP 机制对该领域典型优化问题（即机器调度和设施位置）的近似保证，来深化对 OSP 机制局限性的研究。我们证明了 OSP 机制的近似保证的许多界限，这表明 OSP 可能会付出巨大的代价。然而，相当令人惊讶的是，