Dagstuhl Seminar 13461
Electronic Markets and Auctions
( Nov 10 – Nov 15, 2013 )
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Please use the following short url to reference this page:
https://www.dagstuhl.de/13461
Organizers
- Yishay Mansour (Tel Aviv University, IL)
- Benny Moldovanu (Universität Bonn, DE)
- Noam Nisan (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, IL)
- Berthold Vöcking (RWTH Aachen, DE)
Contact
- Annette Beyer (for administrative matters)
Schedule
The main goal of this Dagstuhl Seminar is to bring together researchers from Computer Science and Economics with the mutual interests in electronic markets and auctions. From the computer science perspective, with the advent of the Internet, there has been a significant amount of work in Algorithmic Game Theory focusing on computational aspects of electronic markets and on algorithmic aspects of mechanism design. Economists have been traditionally interested in markets in general and designing efficient markets mechanisms (such as auctions) in particular. The recent emergence of electronic markets and auctions has only reemphasized the importance of this topic.
The central application of Mechanism Design is the implementation of auctions and markets, and similarly the central application of Algorithmic Mechanism Design is the implementation of complex computerized auctions and markets. As markets and auctions are increasingly implemented over computer networks, and as they are getting more sophisticated, much theoretical research has gone into the design of complex auctions and markets. Issues that need to be treated include computational ones, strategic ones, and communication ones.
We aim in studying the basic research questions that lie behind the growing challenges in electronic markets and auctions. Our intent is to take a broad view of these challenges, focusing on foundational issues, taking a wide perspective, from the high-level issues of Algorithmic Game Theory through the Algorithmic Mechanism Design aspects, to basic challenges of electronic markets and auctions, and ending with the fundamental challenges raised by the ad-auction domain of applications.
- Wie kann man elektronische Märkte und Auktionen verbessern?
Press release (in German)
The relatively young field of Algorithmic Game Theory sets a goal of providing a computational understanding of game theory models. The research in the field has many focal points, including exploring the quality of equilibria, computation of equilibria, algorithmic mechanism design, as well as analyzing computer science related games and gaining an economics perspective for many important optimization problems.
While it is still too early for the evaluation the long term contribution of Algorithmic Game Theory to the field of Economics, in general, and to Game Theory in particular, we would like to highlight some successful contributions. The efficient computational aspects are a clear contribution, and this is also coupled with the understanding that sub-optimal solutions can have various degrees of sub-optimality. By using approximation algorithms approaches traditional in Theoretical Computer Science, the sub-optimality can be quantify in a very rigorous and clear way. The study of concrete convergence rates, rather than convergence in the limit, has proved to be highly successful here, as well. Finally, the extensive study of discrete models, especially combinatorial auctions, has been an area where computer science has made significant contributions.
The economic field of Mechanism Design asks how to design mechanisms that will implement some desired social choice function under rational behavior of the participants. This field is at the forefront of economics research, and its goal is to gain a better understanding of designing mechanisms that considers the incentives of participant. This is in general viewed as part of market design, and micro-economics.
One of the central areas of Algorithmic Game Theory is Algorithmic Mechanism Design. This field is relevant to designing distributed computer systems, suggested that mechanism design should also consider the algorithmic issues involved beyond the strategic ones commonly studied in economics. The seminar concentrated on Algorithmic Game Theory, with an emphasis on the sub-field of Algorithmic Mechanism Design.
The central application of Mechanism Design is the implementation of auctions and markets, and similarly the central application of algorithmic mechanism design is the implementation of complex computerized auctions and markets. As markets and auctions are increasingly implemented over computer networks, and as they are getting more sophisticated, much theoretical research has gone into the design of complex auctions and markets. Issues that need to be treated include computational ones, strategic ones, and communication ones. A central application is, so called, combinatorial auctions, which aim to concurrently sell many related items.
This seminar had researchers discussing basic research questions that lie behind the growing challenges in electronic markets and auctions. The seminar took a broad view of these challenges, focusing on foundational issues, taking a wide perspective, from the high-level issues of Algorithmic Game Theory through the Algorithmic Mechanism Design aspects, to basic challenges of electronic markets and auction.
Creative Commons BY 3.0 Unported license
Yishay Mansour, Benny Moldovanu, Noam Nisan, and Berthold Vöcking
- Yossi Azar (Tel Aviv University, IL) [dblp]
- Moshe Babaioff (Microsoft Corp. - Mountain View, US) [dblp]
- Felix Brandt (TU München, DE) [dblp]
- Yang Cai (MIT - Cambridge, US) [dblp]
- Shahar Dobzinski (Weizmann Institute - Rehovot, IL) [dblp]
- Khaled M. Elbassioni (Masdar Institute - Abu Dhabi, AE) [dblp]
- Michal Feldman (Tel Aviv University, IL) [dblp]
- Amos Fiat (Tel Aviv University, IL) [dblp]
- Felix Fischer (University of Cambridge, GB) [dblp]
- Yannai A. Gonczarowski (The Hebrew Univ. of Jerusalem, IL & Microsoft Reseach - Redmond, US) [dblp]
- Nick Gravin (Microsoft New England R&D Center - Cambridge, US) [dblp]
- Tobias Harks (Maastricht University, NL) [dblp]
- Paul Harrenstein (University of Oxford, GB) [dblp]
- Avinatan Hassidim (Google Israel - Tel-Aviv, IL) [dblp]
- Monika Henzinger (Universität Wien, AT) [dblp]
- Martin Hoefer (Universität des Saarlandes, DE) [dblp]
- Zhiyi Huang (Stanford University, US) [dblp]
- Elias Koutsoupias (University of Oxford, GB) [dblp]
- Annamaria Kovacs (Goethe-Universität - Frankfurt a. M., DE) [dblp]
- Piotr Krysta (University of Liverpool, GB) [dblp]
- Stefano Leonardi (Sapienza University of Rome, IT) [dblp]
- Yishay Mansour (Tel Aviv University, IL) [dblp]
- Paul Milgrom (Stanford University, US) [dblp]
- Rudolf Müller (Maastricht University, NL) [dblp]
- Noam Nisan (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, IL) [dblp]
- Sigal Oren (Hebrew University - Jerusalem, IL) [dblp]
- Britta Peis (RWTH Aachen, DE) [dblp]
- Heiko Röglin (Universität Bonn, DE) [dblp]
- Rahul Savani (University of Liverpool, GB) [dblp]
- Yaron Singer (Harvard University - Cambridge, US) [dblp]
- Balasubramanian Sivan (Microsoft Corporation - Redmond, US) [dblp]
- Alexander Skopalik (Universität Paderborn, DE) [dblp]
- Éva Tardos (Cornell University, US) [dblp]
- Andreas Tönnis (RWTH Aachen, DE) [dblp]
- Rob van Stee (University of Leicester, GB) [dblp]
- Shai Vardi (Tel Aviv University, IL) [dblp]
- Bernhard von Stengel (London School of Economics, GB) [dblp]
- S. Matthew Weinberg (MIT - Cambridge, US) [dblp]
- Christopher A. Wilkens (Yahoo Labs - Sunnyvale, US) [dblp]
Classification
- data structures / algorithms / complexity
Keywords
- Algorithmic game theory
- mechanism design
- economics
- electronic markets
