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Lectures

The information contained in these lecture notes was compiled by the course TAs in 2017 and 2018, including Takehiro Oyakawa, Gianluca Pane, Gabe Bankman-Fried, and Enrique Areyan-Viqueira. They based these notes in large part on the lecture notes and accompanying videos of Tim Roughgarden's CS 364A and CS 364B courses at Stanford, and Jason Hartline's Mechanism Design and Approximation textbook.

Lecture	Topic	Readings
0	Welcome Applications Logistics
1	Introduction to Game Theory Normal-Form Games Battle of the Sexes ICA: Beauty Contest	Rock, Paper, Scissors (The Simpsons) The Prisoners' Dilemma (Dilbert)
2	Introduction to Auctions Incomplete-Information Games Bayesian Battle of the Sexes Independent Private Values Second-price Auctions First-price Auctions (Uniform Case)	Bayesian Games & Games of Incomplete Information, by Mohammad T. Hagiaghayi
3	Introduction to Mechanism Design Order Statistics and Revenue Equivalence Mechanism Design and the Revelation Principle The Envelope Theorem
4	Welfare Maximization & Myerson's Lemma Auction Model and Design Goals Myerson's Payment Characterization Applications of Myerson's Lemma Sponsored Search	On the folly of rewarding A, while hoping for B Badminton and the Science of Rule Making Real Badminton Rally vs. Fixed Badminton Rally Myerson's Lemma (Stanford CS 364A)
5	Revenue Maximization & Myerson's Theorem Myerson's Optimal Auction Applications of Myerson's Theorem Regular and MHR Distributions	Myerson's Theorem (Stanford CS 364A)
6	Posted-Price Mechanisms Myerson: Welfare Myerson: Revenue Inverse Transform Sampling Introduction to Approximation Algorithms Posted-Price Mechanisms: Bidder Behavior Posted-Price Mechanisms: Approximating Revenue	Prior-Independent Approximations (Mechanism Design & Approximation)
7	Simple vs. Optimal Mechanisms Bulow and Klemperer's Theorem Prophet Inequality Ironing	Prophet Inequality and Bulow-Klemperer (Stanford CS 364A) An Economic View of Prophet Inequalities
8	Combinatorial Auctions The VCG Mechanism	Multiparameter Mechanism Design (Stanford CS 364A)
9	EPIC Auctions Ascending Auctions Spectrum Auctions SAAs with Additive Valuations EPIC Ascending Auctions SAAs with Additive Valuations, cont'd	Spectrum Auction Slides The Magic of Auctions EPIC Auctions (Stanford CS 364B) SATS: A Universal Spectrum Auction Test Suite
10	Competitive Equilibrium Competitive Equilibrium in Unit-Demand Markets Unit-Demand Valuations and the CK Auction	Unit-Demand Valuations (Stanford CS 364B) CK Auction (Stanford CS 364B)
11	Clinching Auction Clinching Auction	Clinching Auction (Stanford CS 364B)
12	Gross Substitute Valuations and the KC Auction Competitive Equilibrium and Gross Substitutes	Gross Substitutes (Stanford CS 364B)
Final Project	Spectrum Auctions Game AdX Game AdX Agent Design