Itai Ashlagi will be teaching Econ 287 this quarter, on topics in market design. It's highly recommended.
He writes that the syllabus below is very tentative, and will depend in part on how many of the enrolled students took Econ 285 (Ostrovsky and Roth) in the Fall (back in 2023:-)
Topics in Market Design 2024, Itai Ashlagi
Market design is a field that links the rules of the of the marketplace to understand frictions, externalities and more generally economic outcomes. The course will provide theoretical foundations on assignment and matching mechanisms as well as mechanism design. There will be emphasis on theories at the intersection of economics, CS and operations as well as applications that arise in labor markets, organ allocation, platforms.
The class will further expose students to timely market design challenges and will we will host a few guest lectures. The class offers an opportunity to begin a research project. Students will reading critique papers, present papers and write a final paper.
Lectures: Monday 10:30am-1:20pm Shriram 052
Course requirements: (i) reading and writing critiques about papers, (ii), presenting papers in class, and (iii) a term paper.
Instructor: Itai Ashlagi. iashlagi@stanford.edu
Some potential papers for presenting:
Equity and Efficiency in Dynamic Matching: Extreme Waitlist Policies, Nikzad and Strack.
Eliminating Waste in Cadaveric Organ Allocation, Shi and Yin
Pick-an-object mechanisms, Bo and Hakimov
Monopoly without a monopolist, Huberman, Leshno and Moallemi
The College Portfolio Problem, Ali and Shorrer
Equal Pay for Similar Work, Passaro, Kojima, and Pakzad-Hurson
Auctions with Withdrawal Rights: A Foundation for Uniform Price, Haberman and Jagadessan.
Optimal matchmaking strategy in two-sided marketplaces, Shi
Practical algorithms and experimentally validated incentives for equilibrium-based fair division (ACEEI),
Budish, Gao, Othman, Rubinstein
Congestion pricing, carpooling, and commuter welfare, Ostrovsky and Schwarz
Artificial intelligence and auction design, Banchio and Skrzypacz
Selling to a no-regret buyer, Braverman et al.
Dynamic matching in overloaded waiting lists, Leshno
The regulation of queue size by levying tolls, Naor
Optimal search for the best alternative, Weitzman
Whether or not to open Pandora’s box, Doval
Descending price optimally coordinates search, Kleinberg, Waggoner, Weyl
Market Failure in Kidney Exchange? Nikhil Agarwal, Itai Ashlagi, Eduardo Azevedo, Clayton Featherstone and Omer Karaduman
Choice Screen Auctions, Michael Ostrovsky
Incentive Compatibility of Large Centralized Matching Markets, Lee
Tentative schedule:
Week 1: Two-sided matching, stability and large markets.
Week 2: One-sided matching, duality, optimization and constraints.
Week 3: Multi-item auctions, auction design, revenue equivalence, optimal auctions, interdependent
valuations.
Week 4: Congestion, dynamic matching.
Week 5: Waitlists, search and learning.
Week 6: Foundations of mechanism design.
Week 7: Robustness in implementation
Weeks 8-10: Projects
We will host several guest lectures. Presentations of papers will take place throughout the course.
Background references
1. List of (mostly applied) papers are given in a separate document.
2. Books
Roth, Alvin E.and Marilda A. Oliveira Sotomayor, Two-sided matching: A study in game-theoretic modeling and analysis. No. 18. Cambridge University Press, 1992.
Vijay Krishna, Auction Theory, 2010.
Tilman Borgers, An Introduction to Mechanism Design by Tilman Borgers.
Milgrom, Paul, Putting Auction Theory to Work, 2004.
3. Papers
(a) Introduction
Roth, Alvin E. The Economist as Engineer: Game Theory, Experimentation, and Computation as Tools for Design Economics. Econometrica, 70(4), 2002. 1341-1378.
Klemperer, Paul, What Really Matters in Auction Design?, Journal of Economic Perspectives, 16(1): 169-189, 2002.
Weitzman, Martin, Is the Price System or Rationing More Effective in Getting a Commodity to Those Who Need it Most?, The Bell Journal of Economics, 8, 517-524, 1977.
(b) Stable matching and assignment
Gale, David and Lloyd Shapley, College Admissions and the Stability of Marriage, American Mathematical Monthly, 69: 9-15,1962.
Roth and Sotomayor, Chapters 2-5.
Hylland, Aanund, and Richard Zeckhauser. The efficient allocation of individuals to positions, The Journal of Political Economy, 293-314,1979.
Roth, Alvin E., The Evolution of the Labor Market for Medical Interns and Residents: A Case Study in Game Theory. Journal of Political Economy, 92: 991-1016, 1984.
Kojimam, Fuhito and Parag A. Pathak. Incentives and stability in large two-sided matching markets. American Economic Review, 99:608-627, 2009
Abdulkadiroglu, Atila and Tayfun Sonmez. School choice: A mechanism design approach. American Economic Review, 93:729-747, 2003.
Abdulkadiroglu, Atila , Parag A. Pathak, and Alvin E. Roth. The New York City high school match. American Economic Review, 95:364-367, 2005.
Ashlagi, Itai, Yash Kanoria, and Jacob D. Leshno. Unbalanced random matching markets: The stark effect of competition, Journal of Political Economy,
Ashlagi, Itai and Peng Shi. Optimal allocation without money: An engineering approach. Management Science, 2015.
Peng Shi and Nick Arnosti. Design of Lotteries and Waitlists for Affordable Housing Allocation, Management Science, 2019.
Peng Shi, Assortment Planning in School Choice, 2019.
Ashlagi, Itai, and Afshin Nikzad. What matters in tie-breaking rules? how competition guides design, 2015.
(c) Auctions and revenue equivalence
Myerson, Roger Auction Design, Mathematics of Operations Research, 1981.
Milgrom, Paul. Putting Auction Theory to Work. Chapter 2-3.
W. Vickrey, Counterspeculation, auctions, and competitive sealed tenders, The Journal of Finance, 16(1) 8–37, 1961.
R. Myerson, Optimal auction design, Mathematics of Operations research, 1981.
J. Bulow and J. Roberts, The simple economics of optimal auctions, Journal of Political Economy, 1989.
J. Bulow and P. Klemperer, Auctions vs negotiations, American Economic Review, 1996.
P.R. McAfee and J. McMillan, Auctions and bidding, Journal of Economic Literature 1987.
P. Milgrom and R. Weber, A theory of auctions and competitive bidding, Econometrica, 1982.
Roth, A. E. and A. Ockenfels, Late-Minute Bidding and the Rules for Ending Second-Price Auctions: Evidence from eBay and Amazon.” American Economic Review, 92(4): 1093-1103, 2002.
(d) Mechanism design
Vickrey, William (1961): Counterspeculation, Auctions and Competitive Sealed Tenders. Journal of Finance, 16(1): 8-37.
Ausubel, Larry and Paul Milgrom, The Lovely but Lonely Vickrey Auction. in Cramton et. al Combinatorial Auctions, 2005.
J.C. Rochet, A necessary and sufficient condition for rationalizability in a quasi-linear context”, 1987.
K. Roberts, The characterization of implementable choice rules”, 1979.
F. Gul and E. Stacchetti, Walrasian equilibrium with gross substitutes, Journal of Economic Theory, 1999.
I. Ashlagi, M. Braverman, A,. Hassidim and D. Monderer, Monotonicity and implementability, Econometrica, 2011.
(e) Dynamic mechanism design and dynamic pricing
G. Gallego and G. Van Ryzin, Optimal dynamic pricing of inventories with stochastic demand over finite horizons. Management science, 40(8), 999-1020, 1994.
S. Board and A. Skrzypacz, Revenue management with forward-looking buyers, Unpublished manuscript, Stanford University,2010.
A. Gershkov, B. Moldovanu, P. Strack, Revenue Maximizing Mechanisms with Strategic Customers and Unknown, Markovian Demand
D. Bergemann and J. Valimaki, The dynamic pivot mechanism, Econometrica, 2010.
A. Gershkov and B. Moldovanu, Dynamic Revenue Maximization with Heterogeneous Objects: A Mechanism Design Approach, 168-198, 2009.
F. Gul, H. Sonnenschein, R. Wilson, Foundations of dynamic monopoly and the Coase conjecture, J. of Economic Theory, 1986.
D. Besanko and W. L. Whinston, Optimal price skimming by a monopolist facing rational consumers, Management Science, 1990.
(f) Dynamic matching
Itai Ashlagi and Alvin E. Roth. New challenges in multihospital kidney exchange. American Economic Review, 102:354-359, 2012
Nikhil Agarwal, Itai Ashlagi, Eduardo Azevedo, Clayton Featherston and Omer Karaduman. Market Failure in Kidney Exchange, 2018.
Anderson, R., Ashlagi, I., Gamarnik, D. and Kanoria, Efficient Dynamic Barter Exchange, Operations Research, 2015.
Mohammad Akbarpour, Shengwu Li, and Shayan Oveis Gharan. Dynamic matching market design. JPE, 2019.
Baccara, Mariagiovanna, SangMok Lee, and Leeat Yariv, Optimal dynamic matching, 2015.
Jacob Leshno, Dynamic Matching in Overloaded Waiting Lists, 2017.
Posts
