• Calendar

May 18, Wednesday
12:00 – 13:00

We explore dynamic environments in which computational nodes, or decision makers, follow simple and unsophisticated rules of behavior (e.g., repeatedly "best replying" to others' actions, and minimizing "regret") that have been extensively studied in game theory and economics. Our aim is to understand when convergence of the resulting dynamics to an equilibrium point is guaranteed even if nodes' interaction is not synchronized (e.g., as in Internet protocols and large-scale markets). We exhibit general positive and negative results and consider their implications across a wide variety of interesting and timely applications: routing, congestion control, game theory, social networks and circuit design. We also investigate incentives in our framework. Joint work with Aaron D. Jaggard and Rebecca N. Wright (2011) Noam Nisan, Gregory Valiant and Aviv Zohar (2011) Alex Fabrikant (in progress).