1st International Conference on Game Theory for Networks

Research Article

Secure communication: A mechanism design approach

  • @INPROCEEDINGS{10.1109/GAMENETS.2009.5137413,
        author={Ludovic Renou  and Tristan Tomala},
        title={Secure communication: A mechanism design approach},
        proceedings={1st International Conference on Game Theory for Networks},
        publisher={IEEE},
        proceedings_a={GAMENETS},
        year={2009},
        month={6},
        keywords={},
        doi={10.1109/GAMENETS.2009.5137413}
    }
    
  • Ludovic Renou
    Tristan Tomala
    Year: 2009
    Secure communication: A mechanism design approach
    GAMENETS
    IEEE
    DOI: 10.1109/GAMENETS.2009.5137413
Ludovic Renou 1, Tristan Tomala2,*
  • 1: Department of Economics, Astley Clarke, Building, University of Leicester, University Road, Leicester LE1 7RH, United Kingdom.
  • 2: Department of Economics and Finance, HEC School of Management, 78351 Jouy-en-Josas Cedex, France.
*Contact email: tomala@hec.fr

Abstract

This paper considers a mechanism design model where a designer, or receiver, takes an action based on the information received by multiple players, or senders. The agents, senders and receiver, communicate in a fixed directed network. We characterize the communication networks for which, in any environment (utilities and beliefs) with a worst action, every incentive compatible social choice function is implementable on the network. We show that this holds true if and only if the network is weakly 2-connected. A network is weakly 2-connected if for each player i, who is not directly connected to the designer, there exists a player k and two vertex-disjoint paths from k to the designer such that i lies on one of the two paths. We couple encryption techniques together with appropriate incentives to secure the transmission of each player's private information to the designer.