Constantinos Daskalakis: Mechanism Design via Optimal Transport

Speaker: Constantinos Daskalakis

Date: Tuesday, April 28, 2015

Time: 4:15 PM to 5:15 PM Note: all times are in the Eastern Time Zone

Refreshments: 3:45 PM

Public: Yes

Location: G575

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Host: Costis Daskalakis, Ankur Moitra, Dana Moshkovitz and Vinod Vaikuntanathan

Contact: Deborah Lehto, 617.324.7303, dlehto@csail.mit.edu

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Reminders to: seminars@csail.mit.edu, theory-seminars@csail.mit.edu

Reminder Subject: TALK: Constantinos Daskalakis: Mechanism Design via Optimal Transport

Abstract: I will present an optimization framework based on optimal transport theory, characterizing the structure
of revenue-optimal mechanisms in single-bidder multi-item settings. Our framework provides closed-form descriptions
of mechanisms, generalizes Myerson's celebrated single-item auction, and exhibits simple settings with very rich structure
in their optimal mechanism. Our framework improves previous partial results, by establishing a strong duality theorem
between optimal mechanism design and optimal transportation, and is enabled by an extension of the Monge-Kantorovich
duality that accommodates convexity constraints.

The talk is based on work with Alan Deckelbaum and Christos Tzamos

Bio: http://people.csail.mit.edu/costis/shortbio.html

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See other events that are part of the Theory of Computation (TOC) Seminar Series 2015.

Created by Deborah Goodwin at Wednesday, February 04, 2015 at 11:01 AM.