Algorithms for Auctions and Games

Abstract

Economics is one of the diverse aspects of our life in which algorithms play a – perhaps subtle – role. Whether we are buying an item through an eBay auction, or choosing a pricing scheme from our telephone company, we are participants in distributed decision-making processes having consequences that may affect our personal “welfare”. And with the advent of the Internet and the Web, there is an increasing demand for algorithms that run, manage or analyze such economic transactions. In this chapter, we discuss some of the basic notions that underlie an algorithmic view of economic and strategic interactions.