Course Details

Instructor: Professor Kira Goldner (goldner@).
Office Hours: Tuesday 3:15–4:15pm and by appointment.
Office Location: CCDS 1339.

Teaching Fellow: TBD
Office Hours: TBD
OH Location: TBD

Lectures:
Tuesday/Thursday 2:00—3:15pm, TBD.

Important Links:

• Course Policies: Syllabus
• For communication: Piazza
• For submitting homework: Gradescope

Course Description: This course is an introduction to the interdisciplinary area of Algorithmic Mechanism Design: where computational perspectives are applied to economic problems, and economic techniques are brought to problems from computer science. We will explore a broad range of topics at the frontier of new research, starting with some of the fundamentals, such as welfare-maximizing auctions and types of Nash Equilibria. Throughout the semester, the class will also learn about prevalent topics such as (1) Data Science & Incentives, (2) Mechanism Design for Social Good, and (3) optimization and robustness in mechanism design.

The course is aimed at graduate students but will be accessible to motivated advanced undergraduate or masters students with some background in proofs (DS 122), algorithms (DS 320), and probability (MA 581).

Homework: Biweekly homeworks will be posted on Piazza when they become available. Homework must be typed up using LaTeX; here is a quick resource on LaTeX and here is a LaTeX template you may use for the homework. Here is another short guide to LaTeX. You may find it easier to use Overleaf.