Bayesian Truthful Mechanisms for Job Scheduling from Bi-criterion Approximation Algorithms

We provide polynomial-time approximately optimal Bayesian mechanisms for makespan minimization on unrelated machines as well as for max-min fair allocations of indivisible goods, with approximation factors of $2$ and $\min\{m-k+1, \tilde{O}(\sqrt{k})\}$ respectively, matching the approximation ratios of best known polynomial-time \emph{algorithms} (for max-min fairness, the latter claim is true for certain ratios of the number of goods $m$ to people $k$). Our mechanisms are obtained by establishing a polynomial-time approximation-sensitive reduction from the problem of designing approximately optimal {\em mechanisms} for some arbitrary objective ${\cal O}$ to that of designing bi-criterion approximation {\em algorithms} for the same objective ${\cal O}$ plus a linear allocation cost term. Our reduction is itself enabled by extending the celebrated "equivalence of separation and optimization"[GLSS81,KP80] to also accommodate bi-criterion approximations. Moreover, to apply the reduction to the specific problems of makespan and max-min fairness we develop polynomial-time bi-criterion approximation algorithms for makespan minimization with costs and max-min fairness with costs, adapting the algorithms of [ST93], [BD05] and [AS07] to the type of bi-criterion approximation that is required by the reduction.

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