AF: Small: Towards More Realistic Models in Algorithmic Mechanism Design

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Algorithmic mechanism design, or  "incentive engineering", is a topic of great importance at the intersection of game theory, economics and computer science. Research in this field focuses on the design and analysis of algorithms or protocols that are explicitly designed so that rational participants, motivated solely by their self-interest, will end up achieving the designer's goals. In the age of the Internet, the set of important mechanism design applications is vast, including online auctions, advertising auctions, file sharing, routing and scheduling, among others. This project is aimed at developing the foundations of algorithmic mechanism design and its applications.More specifically, the primary goal of the project is to develop simple and robust mechanisms for fundamental problems in algorithmic mechanism design under more realistic modeling assumptions than those used in the past. Building on the theoretical foundations of game theory and computer science, the research will explore auction design in the fundamental setting of agents whose values are correlated or common, and in more realistic settings where agents that do not know their values can spend time and money to learn about them. The PI will also explore mechanism design in repeated and online settings, as well as game-theoretic matching problems.This research has a great potential to influence mechanisms employed in online auctions, a huge societal benefit.