Chen Hajaj: "From Mechanism Design to Incentive Design"

In this talk, I will relate to problems of incentive design in multiple domains. One such problem is that of team formation. Looking at this through the lens of game theory, I will suggest a complete information non-cooperative sequential team formation game in which players iteratively recommend teams, which are either accepted or rejected by their prospective members. In this game, there always exists a single subgame perfect equilibrium in which all team proposals are accepted. Using this finding, I will present the first known team formation mechanisms to satisfy rationality individually, implementing iterative matching of soulmates and Pareto optimality.

Next, I will turn to discuss the implications of incentive design in crowdsourcing environments. In this domain, I will present a mechanism for extending workers’ attention span in monotonous tasks followed by a robust task allocation mechanism in adversarial settings. I will conclude by presenting an individual-rational credit-based matching mechanism for dynamic barter markets—and kidney exchange in particular—that is both strategy-proof and efficient. This mechanism, in addition to being efficient given real data, circumvents a well-known impossibility result in static kidney exchange concerning the existence of an individually rational, strategy-proof, and maximal mechanism.

This talk will be accompanied by theoretical economic and computational analysis, algorithms for implementing such mechanisms in practice, and experimental evaluation with real-world data and actual human subjects.