Efficient Online Mechanisms for Persistent, Periodically Inaccessible Self-Interested Agents

We consider the problem of implementing a system-optimal decision policy in the context of self-interested agents with private state in an uncertain world. Unique to our model is that we allow both persistent agents, with an agent having a local MDP model to describe how its local world evolves given actions by a center, and also periodically-inaccessible agents, with an agent unable to report information while inaccessible. We first review the dynamic-VCG mechanism of Bergemann and V �