Matching, Auctions, and Market Design
General Director:
Alvin E. Roth, Harvard University
Co-director:
Eyal Winter, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Recently there have been opportunities for game theorists interested in auctions and matching markets to help design markets. The practical problems posed by these markets have raised new theoretical questions and shed light on old ones. The matching and auction literatures have been drawn closer, and both have begun to confront more difficult problems. The lectures will focus on new developments in the theory and practice of market design, with examples drawn from auctions for radio spectrum (in the United States and Europe), electricity, gas, carbon emissions, and airport landing slots, and from labour market clearinghouses (e.g. medical doctors), school assignment (including the recently designed clearinghouse for New York City, and work underway in Boston), and organ transplant (including practical aspects of work being done on kidney exchange in New England). We'll also look at various markets in distress, to see what they can tell us about how various market institutions cope with obstacles to reaching an efficient outcome.
The aim of the course is thus to delve into some of the most recent developments in theory, and some of the most practical aspects of market design. The goal is to be able to begin to understand market institutions well enough to fix them when they are broken, and build them when they are absent.
Speakers:
Paul Milgrom (Stanford University)
Benny Moldovanu (Bonn University)
Muriel Niederle (Stanford University)
Michael Ostrovsky (Harvard University)
Alvin E. Roth (Harvard University)
Tayfun Sonmez (Koc University, Istanbul)