Title: Justifying Mechanisms' Outcomes Through Disclosure
Abstract: How can a mechanism designer justify an allocation by disclosing (as little as possible) information about agents' reports? For single-item auctions, the winner's price can be partially justified by disclosing the price-setting bid(s). For priority-based matching, justification can be accomplished by disclosing a small amount of information about the reports of each agent, and in particularly simple ways for common efficient mechanisms.
Bio: Clayton Thomas is currently a postdoctoral associate at Yale University's Center for Algorithms, Data, and Market Design. In January 2026, he will join Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute as an assistant professor of computer science. Before now, he was postdoc at Microsoft Research (New England), and PhD student in CS at Princeton (advised by Matt Weinberg), where he was supported by a Wallace Memorial Fellowship and a Siebel Scholar award. His research is in market and mechanism design, with a particular interest in making mechanisms transparent and explainable.
