Game theory and mechanism design offer an important tool to model, analyze, and solve decentralized design problems involving multiple autonomous agents that interact strategically in a rational and intelligent way. It is worth recalling that the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences for the year 2007 was jointly awarded to celebrated economists Leonid Hurwicz, Eric Maskin, and Roger Myerson for having laid the foundations of mechanism design theory. Just two years before that, in 2005, Thomas Schelling and Robert Aumann had received the Nobel prize for their path breaking work in game theory.

In the past decade, game theory and mechanism design have emerged as an important tool for solving numerous problems in computer science and Internet economics problems. Examples of these problems include design of decentralized algorithms involving selfish agents, design of sponsored search auctions on the web, design of procurement markets in electronic commerce, design of robust communication protocols, design of resource allocation mechanisms in computational grids, analysis of social networks, etc. An emerging discipline, algorithmic game theory, which is concerned with design and analysis of game theoretic algorithms, is now an active research area.

The objective of this course is to provide a foundation of game theory to help students apply game theory to problem solving in a rigorous way. At the end of this course, the students can expect to be able to model real-world situations using game theory, analyze the situations using game theoretic concepts, and design correct and robust solutions (mechanisms, algorithms, protocols) that would work for rational and intelligent agents. The students will have an opportunity to obtain an exposure to and a serious appreciation of the seminal contributions of celebrities such as von Neumann, John Nash, Lloyd Shapley, Robert Aumann, William Vickrey, Leonid Hurwicz, Eric Maskin, and Roger Myerson.

The course will be in three parts: (1) Noncooperative Game Theory (2) Mechanism Design and (3) Cooperative Game Theory.

We're excited to announce that we'll be conducting all class-related discussion on Piazza this semester. Piazza is a question-and-answer platform specifically designed to get you answers fast. They support LaTeX, code formatting, embedding of images, and attaching of files. The quicker you begin asking questions on Piazza (rather than via individual emails to a classmate or one of us), the quicker you'll benefit from the collective knowledge of your classmates and instructors. We encourage you to ask questions when you're struggling to understand a concept—you can even do so anonymously. To find our class, please follow this link, select Spring 2012 as the term, search for E1 254, and enroll as a student. Hope you'll enjoy the online discussions.

To encourage discussions over the lecture notes, we will use the tool called NB. We will post the lecture notes online here. You can comment and ask questions on this tool. The instructor and teaching staff will try to address your questions as soon as possible.