IE 598GT: Topics in Game Theory and Fair Division
2055 Sidney Lu Mech Engr Bldg
3:30-4:50 PM on Tuesdays and Thursdays
Email: jugal<at>illinois<dot>edu
Office Hours: Thursdays 9:30-10:30 PM or by appointment
TA: Xuan Zhang
(xuan6<at>illinois.edu)
Office Hours: Fridays 3:00-4:00 PM (Zoom)
Course Description:
The course will explore various topics at the intersection of economics and computation whose solutions have been deployed to solve a wide-range of real-life settings such as assigning medical residents to hospitals, allocating students to schools, assigning seats in courses, kidney exchange, refugee allocation, assigning public housing, airport traffic management, and so on. The course will cover the topics in foundations of game theory and fair division such as Nash equilibrium, bargaining, mechanism design, fair and efficient allocation of goods/chores, and their computation.
Prerequisite: IE 310 or equivalent; basic knowledge of optimization, probability, and linear algebra; mathematical maturity.
Grading Policy: - 4 Homework assignments (50%)
- 1 Final Exam (15%)
- Project (35%)
You can work in a group of 2 students for each homework assignment and course project. The project could be reading a couple of recent research papers, survey of some topic not covered in the class, or on a research problem. The evaluation of project is based on a written report (8-10 pages), class presentation and class feedback. We will have project presentations at the end of the course.
References
- Algorithmic Game Theory, Eds. Nisan, Roughgarden, Tardos, Vazirani, Cambridge, 2007.
- A Course in Game Theory by Osborne and Rubinstein, MIT Press, 1994.
- Game Theory: Analysis of conflict by Roger Myerson, Harvard Press, 1997.
- Twenty Lectures on Algorithmic Game Theory by Roughgarden, Cambridge, 2016.
- Fair Division: From cake-cutting to dispute resolution by Steven J Brams and Alan D Taylor, Cambridge University Press, 1996.
- Fair division and collective welfare by Hervé Moulin, MIT press, 2004
- Cake-cutting algorithms: Be fair if you can by Jack Robertson and William Webb, CRC Press, 1998.
Lecture Details and References
(This is a tentative list, and subject to change. Slides are available on the compass.)
- Jan 16: Introduction
- Chapter 1 of Algorithmic Game Theory
- Jan 18: Introduction to fair division: EF, EF1, and envy-cycle procedure
- Jan 23: MMS and 2/3-MMS allocation
- Jan 25: Fair division through competitive equilibrium