Dear all,
Next week, we have the pleasure of having Prof. Yannai A. Gonczarowski give a talk in the colloquium.
The seminar will be held on Monday, June 24th at 14:00. Location: C221.
The title, abstract and bio appear below.
Looking forward to seeing you, Sagie and Liat
*Title:* Strategyproofness-Exposing Mechanism Descriptions
*Abstract:*
A menu description presents a mechanism to player i in two steps. Step (1) uses the reports of other players to describe i's menu: the set of i's potential outcomes. Step (2) uses i's report to select i's favorite outcome from her menu. Can menu descriptions better expose strategyproofness, without sacrificing simplicity? We propose a new, simple menu description of Deferred Acceptance. We prove that—in contrast with other common matching mechanisms—this menu description must differ substantially from the corresponding traditional description. We demonstrate, with an incentivized lab experiment, the promise and challenges of menu descriptions.
Based upon joint works with Ori Heffetz, Guy Ishai, and Clayton Thomas.
*Bio*:
Yannai A. Gonczarowski is an Assistant Professor of Economics and of Computer Science at Harvard University—the first faculty member at Harvard to have been appointed to both of these departments. Interested in both economic theory and theoretical computer science, Yannai explores computer-science-inspired economics: he harnesses approaches, aesthetics, and techniques traditionally originating in computer science to derive economically meaningful insights. Yannai received his PhD from the Departments of Mathematics and Computer Science, and the Center for the Study of Rationality, at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Yannai is also a professionally-trained opera singer, having acquired a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree in Classical Singing at the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance. Yannai's doctoral dissertation was recognized with several awards, including the Michael B. Maschler Prize of the Israeli Chapter of the Game Theory Society and the ACM SIGecom Doctoral Dissertation Award. For the design and implementation of the National Matching System for Gap-Year Programs in Israel, he was awarded the inaugural INFORMS AMD Michael H. Rothkopf Junior Researcher Paper Prize (first place). Yannai was also the recipient of the inaugural ACM SIGecom Award for Best Presentation by a Student or Postdoctoral Researcher. His first textbook, "Mathematical Logic through Python" (Gonczarowski and Nisan), which introduces a new approach to teaching the material of a basic Logic course to Computer Science students, tailored to the unique intuitions and strengths of this cohort of students, was published by Cambridge University Press.