Even better, honesty remains the best policy regardless of whether the other bidders are honest themselves. In the prisoner’s dilemma, we saw how defection turned out to be the “dominant” strategy—the best move no matter whether your partner defected or cooperated. In a Vickrey auction, on the other hand, honesty is the dominant strategy. This is the mechanism designer’s holy grail. You do not need to strategize or recurse.
