Course Details
Instructor: Professor Kira Goldner (goldner@).
Office Hours: Tuesday 3:00–4:00pm and by appointment.
Office Location: CCDS 1339 (665 Comm Ave).
Teaching Fellow: Peiran Xiao (pxiao@).
Office Hours: Thursday 3:00–4:00pm and by appointment.
OH Location: 13th Floor.
Lectures:
Tuesday/Thursday 1:30—3:15pm*, CDS 1424.
*This course will almost always take place 1:30-2:45pm. However, sometimes we may have longer classes and not have classes on other weeks. The total lecture time will amount to as if the class were always 1:30-2:45pm. See the lecture schedule for details. If we end at 3:15pm on some Tuesdays, then my office hours will be 3:30-4:30pm those days.
Important Links:
- Course Policies: Syllabus
- For communication: Piazza access code AMD
- For submitting homework: Gradescope course entry code ZZV4DV
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 121), 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.
Lecture Schedule
Below is a table with that will reflect what we cover in each lecture and will point to corresponding reading material. Lectures listed more than one date in advance are tentative topics. There is no required textbook for this course, as all materials are available online for free and we will switch between materials. Some shorthand for the reading material:
- R1.x = Tim Roughgarden's AGT lecture notes, lecture x. (Alternatively available in book form here.)
- R2.x = Tim Roughgarden's AMD lecture notes, lecture x.
- Hx = Jason Hartline's textbook "Mechanism Design and Approximation," chapter x.
- Kx = Anna Karlin's textbook "Game Theory, Alive," chapter x. (Also in book form.)
| Date | Topic | Resources |
|---|---|---|
| Sep 5 | Overview and Policies, Intro to AGT, Incentive Compatibility (–3:15pm) | Slides, Worksheet, Notes, R1.1-3 |
| Sep 7 | NO CLASS—25 min pre-recorded lecture finishing Myerson's Lemma | Worksheet, Notes, R1.3 |
| Sep 12 | NO CLASS—15 min video on Revelation Principle | Worksheet, Notes, R1.4, H2 |
| Sep 14 | NO CLASS—75 min video on Myersonian Virtual Welfare | Worksheet, Notes, R1.5, H3.3 |
| Sep 19 | Ironing Virtual Values & Quantile Space (–3:15pm). CLASS IN CDS 1324. | Worksheet, Notes, H3.3.3-4 |
| Sep 21 | Multidimensional Settings and VCG, Ascending Auctions I | Worksheet, Notes, R1.7, R2.1-2 |
| Sep 26 | Ascending Auctions II & Walrasian Equilibria (–3:15pm) | Worksheet, Notes, R2.2-3,5 |
| Sep 28 | Recap and Big Picture, Linear Programming | Worksheet, Notes, Slides |
| Oct 3 | Linear Programming Duality | Worksheet, Notes |
| Oct 5 | Projects & MD4SG I: Health Insurance Markets | Worksheet, Notes, EGW '20 |
| Oct 10 | NO CLASS (Monday schedule) | |
| Oct 12 | CLASS CANCELLED | Project Description, Project Rubric |
| Oct 17 | MD4SG II: Kidney Exchange | Worksheet, Notes |
| Oct 19 | MD4SG III: Democracy, Summary of MD4SG Directions | Worksheet, Notes |
| Oct 24 | Prophet Inequalities | Worksheet, Notes, R1.6, KW '12 |
| Oct 26 | Balanced Prices: A Multidimensional Extension of Prophet Inequalities | Worksheet, Notes, FGL '15, DFKL '17 | Oct 31 | Go to EAAMO! |
| Nov 2 | KVV, Prior Independence: Bulow-Klemperer & Single Sample | Worksheet, Notes, R1.6, H5.2-3 |
| Nov 7 | Gains from Trade in Two-Sided Markets | Worksheet, Notes, BGG '20 |
| Nov 9 | Interdependent Values I | Worksheet, Notes |
| Nov 14 | Interdependent Values II | Worksheet, Notes |
| Nov 16 | Behavioral Economics and Mechanism Design I | Worksheet, Notes, Shengwu's Tutorial |
| Nov 21 | NO CLASS (Homework 3) | |
| Nov 23 | NO CLASS (Thanksgiving) | |
| Nov 28 | Behavioral Economics II | Worksheet, Notes |
| Nov 30 | Cryptocurrency & Incentives (Matheus V. X. Ferreira) | |
| Dec 5 | Machine Learning and Incentives | Worksheet, Notes, Chara's Tutorial |
| Dec 7 | Project Presentations | Project Description, Project Rubric |
Huge gratitude to all those who shared materials or have publicly available materials which have made the development of this course possible. Individual lectures have acknowledgements to materials used.