Games, algorithms, and the Internet

Christos H. Papadimitriou

Abstract: The advent of the Internet brought parallel paradigm shifts to both Economics and Computer Science. Computer scientists realized that large-scale performing systems can emerge from the interaction of selfish agents and that incentives are a quintessential part of a good system design. And economists saw that the default platforms of economic transactions are computational and interconnected. Algorithmic Game Theory is a subdiscipline that emerged from this turmoil, revisiting some of the most important problems in Economics and Game Theory from a computational and network perspective. This talk will survey some of the major themes, results and challenges in this field.