Mechanisms with costly knowledge
Name
964524632-MIT.pdf
Description
Full printable version
Size
1.74 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
25e488008cff9a95b18d48dd324df204
Author(s)
Ileri, Atalay M. (Atalay Mert)
Advisor(s)
Silvio Micali.
Date Issued
2016
Publisher
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Abstract
We propose investigating the design and analysis of game theoretic mechanisms when the players have very unstructured initial knowledge about themselves, but can refine their own knowledge at a cost. We consider several set-theoretic models of "costly knowledge". Specifically, we consider auctions of a single good in which a player i's only knowledge about his own valuation, [theta]i, is that it lies in a given interval [a, b]. However, the player can pay a cost, depending on a and b (in several ways), and learn a possibly arbitrary but shorter (in several metrics) sub-interval, which is guaranteed to contain [theta]i. In light of the set-theoretic uncertainty they face, it is natural for the players to act so as to minimize their regret. As a first step, we analyze the performance of the second-price mechanism in regret-minimizing strategies, and show that, in all our models, it always returns an outcome of very high social welfare.
Description
Thesis: S.M., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2016.
Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.
Includes bibliographical references (pages 18-21).
Subjects
Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
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