The techniques of mechanism design are widely used in various economic models and analysis. We plan to cover the theory and applications of mechanism design this year. The topics we plan to cover are auctions, contests and mechanism design. We first review the concept of Bayesian equilibrium and perfect Bayesian equilibrium, and then auction theory. We then discuss papers in auctions and mechanism design. The last topic is contest and contest design.
Students are asked to actively participate in class discussions, including asking and answering questions. Furthermore, each student is asked to study a paper (from the literature) and present it in class. Finally, each student is asked to build a simple model involving auctions and/or contests and perform some preliminary analysis.