This is a class about the digital economy, specifically the interplay between economic thinking and computational thinking as it relates to electronic commerce, incentives engineering, and networked systems. Topics covered vary each year, but include a subset of:
- game theory (including peer-to-peer file sharing models and algorithmic game theory),
- auctions (including internet advertising and combinatorial auctions),
- incentive compatible mechanism design (including theoretical and algorithmic approaches),
- human computation, crowd sourcing, and peer prediction,
- matching algorithms,
- trust and reputation,
- electronic currencies (including Bitcoin),
- networks (network formation, cascades, games on networks)
- privacy (including differential privacy and privacy-protected advertising)
- ethical considerations
Emphasis will be given to core methodologies, and the class involves the discussion of theoretical, algorithmic and empirical results.