Algorithmics, Social choice, Market Design, and Other Topics

Yesterday, a dear friend and brilliant ex-colleague --- Markus Brill --- successfully defended his PhD.  Markus was in my research group throughout my stay in Munich and it has been a pleasure working with him. Markus' thesis was on the "Set-Valued Solution Concepts in Social Choice and Game Theory". The thesis spans a range of topics from the computation of set-valued games-theoretic solution concepts such as Shapley's saddles to examining strategic aspects of social choice correspondences especially those based on pairwise majority graphs. The research is focused both on the axiomatic and algorithmic aspects of solution concepts. Markus' doktorvater is Felix Brandt who has had an evident influence on Markus' research interests. The external examiner was Jérôme Lang . Congratulations Markus!

After the t riumph of Shapley and Roth , microeconomics is in the news again. The Economist has profiled some well-known micro-economists who although academics by training have been working for companies such as Microsoft, Google, eBay, influencing how the markets work. The list includes Preston McAfee , Steve Tadelis , Susan Athey , and Hal Varian .