PhD Oral Exam - Ernest Lartey Osei, Economics

When studying for a doctoral degree (PhD), candidates submit a thesis that provides a critical review of the current state of knowledge of the thesis subject as well as the student’s own contributions to the subject. The distinguishing criterion of doctoral graduate research is a significant and original contribution to knowledge.

Once accepted, the candidate presents the thesis orally. This oral exam is open to the public.

Abstract

The present thesis consists of four chapters. The first chapter provides a summary of the three studies on strategyproof allocation rules in a restricted domain.

In the second chapter we consider the problem of allocating two public “bads” on two adjacent streets by two disjoint sets of agents with additive single dipped preferences. We show that any voting rule or social choice function (SCF) satisfying strategyproofness, streetwise Pareto optimality and independence of irrelevant alternatives assigns extreme points at each profile. Moreover, such SCF or voting rule is decomposable - location of a street is determined solely by residents of that street.

In the third chapter we consider the problem of allocating two public ``bads" on two adjacent streets with multi-dimensional single-dipped preferences. Each agent has a worst location on both streets. We show that any strategyproof social choice function (SCF) or voting rules satisfying Pareto optimality and independence of irrelevant alternatives selects only extreme points of the streets as the locations of the public facilities.

In the fourth chapter, I consider the problem of allocating a perfectly divisible commodity among a group of agents with single-dipped preferences. I studied a subdomain of single-dipped preferences and identified a sub-domain that I call the (h*,k*)-dip restricted domain. On that domain I found that Pareto efficiency and equal treatment of equals are compatible. I showed that on this restricted domain, the equal sharing rule is the only rule satisfying strategyproofness, Pareto efficiency and equal treatment of equals.