Mechanism Design

1 Unit · Graduate

This course studies the design of mechanisms to mediate the interaction of strategic individuals so that desirable outcomes are attained. A central theme will be the tradeoff between optimality of an objective such as revenue or welfare and other desirable properties such as simplicity, robustness, computational tractability, and practicality. This tradeoff will be quantified by a theory of approximation which measures the loss of performance of a simple, robust, and practical approximation mechanism in comparison to the complicated and delicate optimal mechanism. The class focuses on techniques for performing this analysis, economic conclusions, and consequences for practice. Syllabus - https://sites.northwestern.edu/hartline/eecs-496-mechanism-design/.