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Applied and bridge studies study record
Market design, antitrust & regulationThe Game-Change Theorem
STATUS · Manuscript in progressSSRN · Not yet posted
MECHANISM
Identify the incentive structure and the condition that would falsify the claim.
RULE CHANGE
Read the intervention only after the paper shows how the current payoff space fails to support system welfare.
READER USE
Use the summary to see where private gain creates system exposure, then check the study record.
Contribution — what this adds to the conversation
The paper bridges impossibility (MST) to action, provides formal theorems, and validates with case studies. It targets economists, institutional scholars, and policy analysts.
WHAT'S NEW · The paper provides the first formal existence proof for game transformation, strict dominance over mechanism design, NP-hardness result, and a complete rule-change taxonomy. These are original contributions within the canon and relative to external literature.
The Game-Change Theorem proves that when mechanism design fails to recover system welfare, transforming the game's rules—rather than adjusting strategies within it—can succeed. It provides a formal existence proof, a complete taxonomy of rule changes (liability shift, strategy constraint, information architecture), and shows that finding the optimal transformation is NP-hard, making satisficing optimal. Three case studies validate the framework.