A recent line of work in mechanism design has focused on guaranteeing incentive compatibility for agents without contingent reasoning skills: obviously strategyproof mechanisms guarantee that it is "obvious" for these imperfectly rational agents to behave honestly, whereas non-obviously manipulable (NOM) mechanisms take a more optimistic view and ensure that these agents will only misbehave when it is "obvious" for them to do so. Technically, obviousness requires comparing certain extrema (defined over the actions of the other agents) of an agent's utilities for honest behaviour against dishonest behaviour. We present a technique for designing NOM mechanisms in settings where monetary transfers are allowed based on cycle monotonicity, which allows us to disentangle the specification of the mechanism's allocation from the payments. By leveraging this framework, we completely characterise both allocation and payment functions of NOM mechanisms for single-parameter agents. We then look at the classical setting of bilateral trade and study whether and how much subsidy is needed to guarantee NOM, efficiency, and individual rationality. We prove a stark dichotomy; no finite subsidy suffices if agents look only at best-case extremes, whereas no subsidy at all is required when agents focus on worst-case extremes. We conclude the paper by characterising the NOM mechanisms that require no subsidies whilst satisfying individual rationality.

翻译：机制设计领域的最新研究关注如何为缺乏条件推理能力的代理保证激励相容性：明显策略证明机制确保这些不完全理性的代理“明显”应诚实行事，而非明显可操纵（NOM）机制则采取更乐观的视角，确保这些代理仅在“明显”应作弊时才会作弊。从技术角度看，“明显性”要求比较代理在诚实行为与不诚实行为下的效用极值（基于其他代理行动定义）。我们提出了一种基于循环单调性的NOM机制设计技术，适用于允许货币转移的场景，该技术可将机制分配函数的规范与支付解耦。借助此框架，我们完整刻画了单参数代理NOM机制的分配函数与支付函数。随后，我们研究经典的双边贸易场景，探讨为确保NOM、效率与个体理性所需的补贴额度及必要性。我们证明了一个鲜明的二分法：若代理仅考虑最优情形极值，则无限补贴也无法保证；若代理关注最差情形极值，则无需任何补贴。论文最后刻画了满足个体理性且无需补贴的NOM机制特征。