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SUMMARY:Simplicity-Expressiveness Tradeoffs in Mechanism Design - Felix Fi
 scher\, Harvard SEAS
DTSTART:20110228T100000Z
DTEND:20110228T110000Z
UID:TALK30052@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Microsoft Research Cambridge Talks Admins
DESCRIPTION:A fundamental result in mechanism design theory\, the so-calle
 d revelation principle\, asserts that for many questions concerning the ex
 istence of mechanisms with a given outcome one can restrict attention to t
 ruthful direct revelation-mechanisms. In practice\, however\, many mechani
 sm use a restricted message space. This motivates the study of the tradeof
 fs involved in choosing simplified mechanisms\, which can sometimes bring 
 benefits in precluding bad or promoting good equilibria\, and other times 
 impose costs on welfare and revenue. We study the simplicity-expressivenes
 s tradeoff in two representative settings\, sponsored search auctions and 
 combinatorial auctions\, each being a canonical example for complete infor
 mation and incomplete information analysis\, respectively. We observe that
  the amount of information available to the agents plays an important role
  for the tradeoff between simplicity and expressiveness. \n\nJoint work wi
 th Paul Duetting and David Parkes
LOCATION:Small lecture theatre\, Microsoft Research Ltd\, 7 J J Thomson Av
 enue (Off Madingley Road)\, Cambridge
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