Spring 2009
9:00-10:20 T/TH, 28 Hillhouse, Room 106
Dirk Bergemann
30 Hillhouse Avenue, #24
432-3592, Email
Office hours T 1:00-3:00
Juuso Valimaki
30 Hillhouse Avenue, #6
432-6519, Email
Office hours T 1:00-3:00
Topic: This course covers selected topics in the economics of information and uncertainty. The first part of the course will cover the theory of mechanism design and some of its applications. The second part of the course will cover some recent papers in communication, learning and networks..
Course Requirements: This course has five basic requirements. They are: (i) reading the assigned papers before the presentation in class, (ii) solving the problem sets, (iii) presenting one research paper, (iv) writing six referee reports (before the presentation of the papers) and (v) writing a term paper. The assignments will be given biweekly. Class participation, assignments, and the term paper will jointly determine the final grade.
Readings: The current reading list will be completed as the class proceeds.
Schedule (complete syllabus):
Tuesday, January 13: Introduction into Mechanism Design
Thursday, January 15: VCG, Pivot, D’Aspremont-Gerard-Varet
Additional Reading:
Tuesday, January 20: First and Second Price Auctions
- Lecture 3
- Chapter 2 and Chapter 3 of Krishna (2002)
- Matthews (1988)
Thursday, January 22: Optimal Auctions
- Lecture 4
- Homework 2
- Homework 2 Solution
- Chapter 5 of Krishna (2002)
- Myerson (1981)
Tuesday, January 27: Bilateral Trade, Single Crossing
Thursday, January 29: Implementation
Tuesday, February 3: Matching Theory
- A. Roth and M. Sotomayor (1990); Two-SidedMatching: A Study in Game-Theoretic Modeling and Analysis, Econometric Society Monograph Series, Cambridge University Press.
- Lecture 7
Thursday, February 5: Large Matching Markets
- A. Roth and E. Peranson (1999) “The Redesign of the Matching Market for American Physicians: Some Engineering Aspects of Economic Design,” American Economic Review, 89 (4) September, 748-780
- F. Kojima and P. Pathak (2008), “Incentives and Stability in Large Two-Sided Matching Markets,” forthcoming, American Economic Review.
- Lecture 8
Tuesday, February 10: Implementation Theory
Thursday, February 12:
class cancelled, make-up class Tuesday, April, 28th
Tuesday, February 17: Correlated Values and Surplus Extraction
Thursday, February 19: Common Value Auction
Tuesday, February 24: Information Aggregation and Large Auctions
Thursday, February 26: Information Aggregation and Large Auctions
Tuesday, March 3: Information Orders
Thursday, March 5: Information Orders
Tuesday, March 24: Auctions and Information Acquisition
Thursday, March 26: Auctions and Information Acquisition
Tuesday, March 31: Bayesian Learning
Thursday, April 2: Multi-Armed Bandits
Tuesday, April 7: Social Learning
Thursday, April 9: Social Learning
Tuesday, April 14: Camilo Dominguez
Thursday, April 16: Anne Guan
Tuesday, April 21: Eric Lu
Thursday, April 23: Muneeza Alam
Friday, April 24: Douglas Norton