A New Approach to Auctions and Mechanism Design
Speaker: Silvio Micali , MIT
Date: May 19 2009
Time: 4:15PM to 5:15PM
Location: 32-155
Host: Scott Aaronson, MIT
Contact: be, imbe@mit.edu
Relevant URL: http://theory.csail.mit.edu/theory-seminars/2009/Spring/silvio.htmlThis is a joint TOC-LIDS colloquium.
Mechanism design's goal is to guarantee a given property P, defined on state information known only to a set of players, by leveraging the players' knowledge and rationality. Traditionally, this goal is interpreted as designing a game G such that P holds at one or more of G's equilibria. But due to collusion, as well as computational complexity and privacy concerns, traditional mechanisms may be very far from guaranteeing their desired properties.
We thus put forward a new approach to mechanism design that (1) does not rely on equilibria, (2) is resilient to collusion, and (3) harmonizes incentives with computational complexity and privacy. We exemplify our approach for revenue in combinatorial auctions.
(Joint work with Jing Chen, and part of a joint research effort with Paul Valiant.)
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