COWLES FOUNDATION FOR RESEARCH IN ECONOMICS
AT YALE UNIVERSITY

Box 208281
New Haven, CT 06520-8281

COWLES FOUNDATION DISCUSSION PAPER NO. 954

"Inefficiency of Strategy-Proof Allocation Mechanisms in Pure Exchange Economies"

Lin Zhou

September 1990

In this paper I prove that in the standard model of 2 times n (n > 2) pure exchange economies there is no allocation mechanism that is efficient, non-inversely-dictatorial, and strategy-proof. This strengthens two previous results on this subject by Hurwicz and by Dasgupta, Hammond, and Maskin.