Bruce Hajek

The Information Requirements of Mechanism Design

Mechanism design deals with the problem of distributing goods among agents.  The talk will review some of the basics of mechanism design, with an emphasis on the communication requirements. A special case of mechanism design is the auction of a single object, and another application is the allocation of link capacity to users of a network. Typically there are agents (buyers and/or sellers) with private information regarding preferences and valuations for the goods, and communication of the information is central within mechanism design.   The agents are often assumed to behave strategically, so that allocations are determined by the outcomes of games.  Mechanisms can be designed, for example, to maximize social welfare, or to maximize revenue to a certain agent.   Recent work on efficient allocation based on one-dimensional bids will be discussed, including allocation of a divisible public good (joint work with Sujay Sanghavi) and allocation of network capacity based on sum bids for each flow (joint work with Sichao Yang).

The slides for this presentation can be downloaded here.