Economics and Computation

Course overview

Instructor: Lirong Xia (lirong.xia@rutgers.edu). Please call me Lirong.
Time: Mon and Wed, 2:00-3:20 pm
Location: SEC 208
Office hours:
- by appointment
- Piazza
All lecture notes are here. Please login with your Rutgers Box account, and do not share anything outside this class.

Tentative schedule (subject to change)

Week	Date	Topic	Slides	Project/Homework
1
1	1-22	Introduction, Simultaneous-move games	Intro pptx Computation pdf, ppsx Game theory pdf, ppsx	Sign up on Piazza
2	1-27	Equilibrium computation	same as above
2	1-29	Existence	same as above
3	2-3	Sequential-move games	same as above
3	2-5	Correlated equilibrium, algorithmic game theory	same as above	Homework 1 (game theory)
4	2-10	Auctions	pdf, ppsx
4	2-12	Mechanism Design	pdf, ppsx	Homework 2 (mechanism design and matching)
5	2-17	Social Choice: voting	pdf, ppsx
5	2-19	Social Choice: strategic manipulation	pdf, ppsx	Homework 3 (social choice)
6	2-24	Wisdom of the Crowd	pdf, ppsx
6	2-26	Preference Modeling	pdf, ppsx
7	3-3	Matching	pdf, ppsx
7	3-5
8	3-10
8	3-12			Try to schedule a meeting with Lirong about project before this
9 spring recession no class	3-17
9 spring recession no class	3-19			Project proposal due
10	3-24
10	3-26
11	3-31	Doga Diren Thai Vu Eric Liu Joshua Park Brandon Liau
11	4-2	Artem Ivaniuk & Kyle Hammermueller Daniel Ojeda Varshini Gopalakrishnan Noah Jaskiewicz Gideon Edward Elian Deogracia-Brito
12	4-7	Alex Cohen Jennie Nguyen Venora Furtad and Tejaswi Tripathi Zac Blend Muskan Aga Nalani Sanabria
12	4-9	Yuhong Luo
13	4-14
13	4-16
14	4-21
14	4-23
15	4-28	Doga Diren Thai Vu Eric Liu Gideon Edward Brandon Liau Yuhong Luo
15	4-30	Artem Ivaniuk & Kyle Hammermueller Daniel Ojeda Varshini Gopalakrishnan Noah Jaskiewicz Joshua Park Elian Deogracia-Brito
16	5-5	Alex Cohen Jennie Nguyen Venora Furtad and Tejaswi Tripathi Zac Blend Muskan Aga Nalani Sanabria		Final report due
16

Textbook

(In progress) D. Parkes and S. Seuken. Economics and Computation.
L. Xia. Learning and Decision-Making from Rank Data.
Y. Shoham and K. Leyton-Brown, Multiagent Systems: Algorithmic, Game-Theoretic, and Logical Foundations, 2009.
N. Nisan, T. Roughgarden, E. Tardos and V. Vazirani, Algorithmic Game Theory, 2007.

General Class Policies

Website and Announcements. We will make extensive use of piazza and the course website. You are responsible for checking the course website regularly for announcements and course materials, as well as your e-mail for communications related to the class.
Lectures. Students are highly encouraged to attend all classes. You are responsible for all material covered and announcements made in lecture.
Laptops and Electronic Devices. No laptops or other electronic devices are allowed in lecture, excpet that you use it for in-class polling. Even if you are diligently taking notes on your laptop, the bright screen and the activity is extremely distracting to the people behind you. Because of this, "movie theater" rules apply: no laptops, phones, or other devices with a screen on them should be out during lecture, except for in-class polling. After the polling, you must turn it off. Students who continually disrupt the class will be asked to leave.

Grading

Project and presentations 70%. Students can team up (no more than 2 students per group, in rare cases 3 might be possible but please discuss with Lirong)

Some published projects from past years

Benjamin Kelly. Gerrymandering under Uncertain Preferences. Proceedings of AAAI-22 (student abstract).
Joshua Kavner, Lirong Xia. Strategic Behavior is Bliss: Iterative Voting Improves Social Welfare. In Proceedings of NeurIPS-21. [arXiv]
Shreyas Sekar, Sujoy Sikdar, and Lirong Xia. Condorcet Consistent Bundling with Social Choice. In Proceedings of AAMAS-17.
David Hughes, Kevin Hwang, and Lirong Xia. Computing Optimal Bayesian Decisions for Rank Aggregation via MCMC Sampling. In Proceedings of UAI -15.

Participation 30%: calculated by number of times the student take in-class polls at Piazza (does not matter whether the student's answer is correct, so please come and vote)

Homeworks

There will be 3 homeworks. However, please do not turn in your homework. Ask questions on Piazza for help.

Projects and Presentations

Project proposal. The format is similar to a typical conference paper in CS, for example any published projects listed above. Please try to address the following questions. There is generally no requirement in the length but please make sure that the problems are addressed as much as you can. Each team must schedule at least one meeting with Lirong to discuss the topic.

What is the problem?
Why is it important?
What has been done? (Give references if you can.)
Why previous work cannot solve the problem?
How am I going to try to solve the problem?
What is my timeline?

First presentation. Each group has 15 min to cover the same set of questions listed above (in the proposal). Please remember to include a timeline.
Second presentation. Each group has 10 min to (1) quickly remind the audience about the problem, (2) discuss the progress since the first presentation, and (3) present an updated timeline.
Third (final) presentation. Each group has 15 min to (1) introduce the problem (shorter than the first presentation but longer than the second presentation), (2) present the overall approaches, discuss the conclusions, what worked what doesn't, etc., (3) future work, pretending that you will continue the project.
Final report. This could either be like a submission to an academic conference or a scientific blog post.

Academic dishonesty

Student-teacher relationships are based on trust. For example, students must trust that teachers have made appropriate decisions about the structure and content of the courses they teach, and teachers must trust that the assignments that students turn in are their own. Acts which violate this trust undermine the educational process. No collaboration, or any electronic devices, is allowed during exams. Violating the above policy may result in a failing grade for the class.

Acknowledgements

Thanks Felix Brandt, Yiling Chen, Ulle Endriss, Vincent Conitzer, David Parkes, Sven Seuken, Ariel Procaccial, Sven Seuken for offering tremendous helps on developing the course!