Maskin-monotonic scoring rules

Abstract

We characterize which scoring rules are Maskin-monotonic for each social choice problem as a function of the number of agents and the number of alternatives. We show that a scoring rule is Maskin-monotonic if and only if it satisfies a certain unanimity condition. Since scoring rules are neutral, Maskin-monotonicity turns out to be equivalent to Nash-implementability within the class of scoring rules. We propose a class of mechanisms such that each Nash-implementable scoring rule can be implemented via a mechanism in that class. Moreover, we investigate the class of generalized scoring rules and show that with a restriction on score vectors, our results for the standard case are still valid.