Bloch, Francis and Olckers, Matthew creator text American Economic Journal: Microeconomics monographic eng

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14(2), May, 2022: p.176-214 We analyze the design of a mechanism to extract a ranking of individuals according to a unidimensional characteristic, such as ability or need. Individuals, connected on a social network, only have local information about the ranking. We show that a planner can construct an ex post incentive compatible and efficient mechanism if and only if every pair of friends has a friend in common. We characterize the windmill network as the sparsest social network for which the planner can always construct a complete ranking. – Reproduced American Economic Journal: Microeconomics 221226