Date: Monday, October 13th, 2025
10:00 am – 11:00 am Pacific Time
1:00 pm – 2:00 pm Eastern Time
Location: Weekly Seminar, Zoom
Title: Sharing with Frictions: Limited Transfers and Costly Inspections
Abstract:
The scarcity of spectrum for high-quality communication is limited. A portion of it has been reserved for federal agencies, the military, public safety bodies and scientific institutions who need interference-free access. Commercial users also want access. Granting them access may materially interfere with existing activity such as detecting gravitational waves or measuring cosmic radiation. Conventional market based mechanisms for allocating scarce resources in this context are problematic. Allowing direct transfers to and from public or scientific institutions risks distorting their mission. Thus, our problem is to determine the efficient allocation of resources in the presence of private information but without the use of monetary transfers. The problem is not unique to spectrum. Other resources that governments hold in trust share the same feature. We propose a novel mechanism design formulation of the problem, characterize the optimal mechanism and describe some of its qualitative properties.
Bio:
Federico Bobbio is a Postdoctoral Researcher at Northwestern University, affiliated with SpectrumX, working under the mentorship of Michael Honig, Randall Berry, Rakesh Vohra, Thanh Nguyen, and Vijay Subramanian. He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science and Operations Research from Université de Montréal, advised by Margarida Carvalho. His research interests include algorithmic policymaking, game theory, matching theory, and optimization. Before his Ph.D., he studied theoretical mathematics at the University of Pisa. He’s also been a research consultant at CERC DS4DM, collaborating with Andrea Lodi. His work spans both theoretical models and real-world policy applications such as school choice and spectrum sharing.