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CS286r: Course Schedule

The following schedule is tentative. It may change as we see fit.

Date Topic Readings Lecture Notes and Other  Materials
Non-Cooperative Game Theory
Mon 9/15 (lecture) Introduction General background reading:
Y. Shoham. Computer science and game theory. Communications of the ACM, 51(8):7579, 2008.
Lecture Notes
Wed 9/17 (lecture) Expected Utility Theory & Normal-Form Games SLB Chapter 3 Lecture Notes
Mon 9/22 (lecture) Perfect-Information Extensive-Form Games SLB Chapter 5.1 Lecture Notes 
Wed 9/24 (lecture) Imperfect-Information Extensive-Form Games SLB Chapter 5.2 Lecture Notes
Mon 9/29 (lecture) Bayesian Games SLB Chapter 6.3 Lecture Notes
Prediction Markets
Wed 10/1 (lecture) Rational Expectation Equilibrium, Different Market Mechanisms, and Proper Scoring Rules Part of the lecture notes are based on:

P. Milgrom and N. Stoke. Information, Trade, and Common Knowledge. Journal of Economic Theory, 26(1):17-27, 1982.

R. Selten. Axiomatic Characterization of the Quadratic Scoring Rule. Experimental Economics, 1(1):43-61, 1998.

R. Winkler. Scoring Rules and the Evaluation of Probability Assessors. Journal of the American Statistical Association, 64(317):1073-1078, 1969.
Lecture Notes
Mon 10/6 Empirical Studies of Prediction Markets J. Berg, R. Forsythe, F. Nelson and T. Rietz, Results from a Dozen Years of Election Futures Markets Research, 2001.

B. Cowgill, J. Wolfers, and E. Zitwewitz. Using Prediction Markets to Track Information Flows: Evidence from Google. 2008.
Presentation by S. Travis May
Wed 10/8 Market Scoring Rules R. Hanson. Logarithmic Market Scoring Rules for Modular Combinatorial Information Aggregation. Journal of Prediction Markets, 1(1):3-15, 2007.

R. Hanson. Combinatorial Information Market Design. Information Systems Frontiers. 5(1):105-119, 2003.
Presentation by Sagar Mehta

David Pennock's blog on how to implement market scoring rules as a market maker.
Mon 10/13 Columbus Day. No Class.
Wed 10/15 Strategic Play in Prediction Markets S. Dimitrov and R. Sami. Non-myopic Strategies in Prediction Markets. ACM Conference on Electronic Commerce (EC), 2008.

Y. Chen, D. Reeves, D. Pennock, R. Hanson, L. Fortnow, and R. Gonen. Bluffing and Strategic Reticence in Prediction Markets. The International Workshop on Internet and Network Economics (WINE), 2007.
Presentation by Nick Wells
Mon 10/20 Combinatorial Prediction Markets Y. Chen, L. Fortnow, E. Nikolova, and D. Pennock. Betting on Permutations. ACM Conference on Electronic Commerce (EC), 2007.

Y. Chen, S. Goel, and D. Pennock. Pricing Combinatorial Prediction Market for Tournaments. ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing (STOC), 2008.
Presentation by Brett Harrison;
Presentation by Rory Kulz
Wed 10/22 Distributed Computation in Markets J. Fiegenbaum, L. Fortnow, D. Pennock, and R. Sami. Computation in a Distributed Information Market. Theoretical Computer Science. 343(1-2), pp. 114-132, 2005. Presentation by Zhenming Liu
Social Choice
Mon 10/27 (lecture) Voting Rules and Impossibility Results Lecture notes are based on SLB Chapter 9, and

J. Geanakoplos. Three Brief Proofs of Arrow's Impossibility Theorem. Economic Theory, 26(1):211-215, 2005.
Lecture notes
Wed 10/29 Computationally Hard to Manipulate V. Conitzer, T. Sandholm, and J. Lang. When are elections with few candidates hard to manipulate? Journal of the ACM, 54(3):1–33, 2007. Presentation by Subhash Arja
Mon 11/3 Faked Identities V. Conitzer. Anonymity-Proof Voting Rules. The International Workshop on Internet and Network Economics (WINE), 2008.

L. Wagman and V. Conitzer. Optimal False-Name-Proof Voting Rules with Costly Voting. In Proceedings of the 23rd National Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-08), pp. 190-195, Chicago, IL, USA, 2008.
Presentation by Haoqi Zhang;
Presentation by Malvika Rao 
Wed 11/5 Ranking Systems A. Altman and M. Tennenholtz. Ranking Systems: The PageRank Axioms. In Proceedings of the 6th ACM conference on Electronic commerce (EC). 2005.

F. Wu and B. Huberman. Popularity, Novelty, and Attention. In Proceedings of the 6th ACM conference on Electronic commerce (EC). 2008.
Presentation by Michael Aubourg
An intersting article by R. Hanson: Shall We Vote on Values, But Bet on Beliefs?
Peer Production
Mon 11/10 Wikipedia and etc. D. Spinellis and P. Louridas. The Collaborative Organization of Knowledge. Communications of ACM. 51(8): 68-74, 2008.

D. Wilkinson. Strong regularities in online peer production. In Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Electronic Commerce (EC), 2008.
Presentation by Ziyad Aljarboua

HBS Wikipedia case study
Wed 11/12 Knowledge Sharing J. Yang, L. Adamic, and M. Ackerman. Crowdsourcing and Knowledge Sharing: Strategic User Behavior on Taskcn. In Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Electronic Commerce (EC), 2008.

L. Adamic, J. Zhang, E. Bakshy, and M. Ackerman. Knowledge sharing and Yahoo Answers: Everyone knows something. WWW 2008.
Presentation by Xiaolu Yu
Human Computation
Mon 11/17 ESP Game L. v. Ahn and L. Dabbish. Designing Games with A Purpose. Communications of ACM. 51(8): 58-67, 2008.

S. Jain and D. Parkes. A Game-Theoretic Analysis of Games with a Purpose. The International Workshop on Internet and Network Economics (WINE), 2008.

S. Jain and D. Parkes. A Game-Theoretic Analysis of Games with a Purpose. Working Paper.
Presentation by Xi Alice Gao
Wed 11/19 Peekaboom and CAPTCHA L. v. Ahn, R. Liu and M. Blum. Peekaboom: A Game for Locating Objects in Images. In ACM CHI 2006.

L. von Ahn, M. Blum, N. Hopper and J. Langford. CAPTCHA: Using Hard AI Problems for Security. In Eurocrypt 2003.
Presentation by Angela Ying
Reputation Systems
Mon 11/24 The Value of Reputation P. Resnick, R. Zeckhauser, J. Swanson, and K. Lockwood. The Value of Reputation on eBay: A Controlled Experiment. Experimental Economics. 9(2) pp. 79-101, 2006 Presentation by Andrew Berry
Wed 11/26 Whitewashing P. Resnick and E. Friedman, The social cost of cheap pseudonyms. Journal of Economics and Management Strategy, 10(2):173-199, 2001. Presentation by Peter Blair
Mon 12/1 Elicit Honest Feedback N. Miller, P. Resnick, and R. Zeckhauser. Eliciting Honest Feedback: The Peer-Prediction Method. Management Science, 51(9): 1359-1373, 2005.

R. Jurca and B. Faltings. Minimum Payments that Reward Honest Feedback. In Proceedings 7th ACM Conference on Electronic Commerce (EC), pp. 190-199, 2006.
Presentation by Nikhil Srivastava
Presentation by Hao-Yuh Su
Wed 12/3 Sybilproofness A. Cheng and E. Friedman. Sybilproof reputation mechanisms. In Proceedings of the ACM SIGCOMM Workshop on Economics of Peer-to-Peer Systems, 2005.

A. Cheng and E. Friedman. Manipulability of PageRank under Sybil Strategies. In Proceedings of the First Workshop of Networked Systems (NetEcon06). 2006.
Presentation by Brian Young
Scrip Systems
Mon 12/8 The use of scrip systems E. Friedman, J. Halpern, and I. Kash. Efficiency and Nash Equilibria in a Scrip System for P2P Networks. In Proceedings of Seventh ACM Conference on Electronic Commerce. 2006.

D. Reeves, B. Soule, and T. Kasturi. Yootopia!. ACM SIGecom Exchanges, 6(2): 1-16, 2006.
Presentation by Victor Chan
Wed 12/10 Optimizing scrip systems E. Friedman, J. Halpern, and I. Kash. Optimizing Scrip Systems: Efficiency, Crashes, Hoarders, and Altruists.  In Proceedings of Seventh ACM Conference on Electronic Commerce. 2007. Presentation by Avner May
Wed 12/15 Student Project