RI-Medium: Methods for Empirical Mechanism Design

The design of computational systems that support group decisions, allocate resources to distributed tasks, or mediate social interactions is fundamentally different from the corresponding design problem serving individual or centralized users. When multiple parties, or agents, are involved, the designer’s objectives are complicated by the fact that the interests of these parties are rarely, if ever, perfectly aligned. The field of mechanism design offers a theoretical framework that directly addresses the issue of incentives as it relates to the design of multiagent systems (MAS). However, this purely analytical approach carries with it inherent practical limitations. The investigators propose a new approach, empirical mechanism design (EMD), whose premise is to extend the basic foundation of mechanism design with empirical methods. These extensions promise to dramatically expand the scope of mechanism design beyond the small-scale, stylized, or idealized domains to which it has been predominantly limited to date. The investigators will practically demonstrate the extended capabilities of their methodology through the development and analysis of novel mechanisms for significant application domains, primarily in the context of market design. As a bridge between two prevalent multiagent systems research paradigms—game-theoretic analysis and simulation experimentation— EMD promises to advance the broader MAS field.