Studies in Economic Design – serie

This collection of essays represents responses by over eighty scholars to an unusual request: give your high level assessment of the field of economic design, as broadly construed. Where do we come from? Where do we go from here? The book editors invited short, informal reflections expressing deeply felt but hard to demonstrate opinions, unsupported speculation, and controversial views of a kind one might not normally risk submitting for review. The contributors – both senior researchers who have shaped the field and promising, younger researchers – responded with a diverse collection of provocative pieces, including: retrospective assessments or surveys of the field; opinion papers; reflections on critical points for the development of the discipline; proposals for the immediate future; "science fiction"; and many more. The readers should have fun reading these unusual pieces – as much as the contributors enjoyed writing them.

The contributors – both senior researchers who have shaped the field and promising, younger researchers – responded with a diverse collection of provocative pieces, including: retrospective assessments or surveys of the field;

This book contains invited essays in memory of Leonid Hurwicz spanning a large area of economic, social and other sciences where the implementation or enforcement of institutions and rules requires the design of effective mechanisms.

This volume gathers some of the finest and most recent research in economic and political design. Among the authors are several most prominent academics as well as many new and promising researchers. They investigate social choice and electoral systems, auctions, matching, bargaining, coalitional stability and efficiency, regulation, the design of rights, mechanisms, games, hierarchies and information. The book is bound to become a standard reference as a collection displaying where we are and where we are going in a broad spectrum of areas in economic design.

Theory of social choice mechanisms is a comparatively new theory. The first results were obtained as early as the beginning of the seventies. The book contains the most important results of the theory. In two main topics the book describes what mechanisms allow equilibrium solutions at any agents' preference profiles, and what outcomes can be implemented. The answer depends on the equilibrium concept. Furthermore the four equilibrium concepts Nash equilibrium, strong Nash equilibrium, equilibrium in dominant strategies, and the core were described in detail.

The organization of individuals into networks and groups is of fundamental importance in many social and economic interactions. Examples range from networks of personal contacts used to obtain information about job opportunities to the formation of trading partnerships, alliances, cartels, and federations. Much of our understanding of how and why such networks and groups form, and the precise way in which the network or groups structure affects outcomes of social and economic interaction, is relatively new. This volume collects some of the central papers in this recent literature, which have made important progress on this topic.

The book is a collection of contributed papers in honor of Roy Radner. Reflecting Radner's broad range of research interests, the papers cover quite diverse areas, ranging over general equilibrium analysis of the market mechanism, economies undergoing transition, satisficing behavior, markets with asymmetric information, organizational resource allocation and information processing, incentives and implementation, stable sets and the core, stochastic sequential bargaining games, perfect equilibria in a macro growth model, repeated games, and evolutionary games.

This book, Advances in Economic Design, celebrates the birth of SED, the Society for Economic Design. It grew out of SED 2000, the first International Conference of the Society for Economic Design, which took place in istanbul during 23-27 lune, 2000. While it is not a proceedings or even a selected proceedings volume, it nevertheless contains many chapters which derive from papers presented at SED 2000, although they have typically been substantially reworked, extended and deepened. Of course, all the papers published in this book were anonymously refe­ reed. As a collection of selected essays, the book displays the state of the art across a broad spectrum of theoretical questions and topics and areas of application which economic designers are investigating. This characteristic of the book is reflected in its organization into seven parts: (A) Social Choice and Electoral Systems, (B) Buyers and SeIlers, (C) Bargaining, (D) Coalitional Stability and Efficiency, (E) Regulating and Organizing Markets, (F) Designing Rights, (G) Information. Most of the chapters of this book were edited for their English. Ms. ludith Tucker edited Chapters A2, A3, BI, B3, Cl, C4, DI, D2, D3, E2, E3, F2, F3 and F4, while Dr. Noah Hardy linguistically edited Chapters B2, B4 and C3. We thank Ms. Tucker and Dr. Hardy for their diligent support in this regard.

Theory of social choice mechanisms is a comparatively new theory. The first results were obtained as early as the beginning of the seventies. The book contains the most important results of the theory. In two main topics the book describes what mechanisms allow equilibrium solutions at any agents' preference profiles, and what outcomes can be implemented. The answer depends on the equilibrium concept. Furthermore the four equilibrium concepts Nash equilibrium, strong Nash equilibrium, equilibrium in dominant strategies, and the core were described in detail.

The organization of individuals into networks and groups is of fundamental importance in many social and economic interactions. Examples range from networks of personal contacts used to obtain information about job opportunities to the formation of trading partnerships, alliances, cartels, and federations. Much of our understanding of how and why such networks and groups form, and the precise way in which the network or groups structure affects outcomes of social and economic interaction, is relatively new. This volume collects some of the central papers in this recent literature, which have made important progress on this topic.