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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 to CSCI 1440/2440	Guidelines for Class Participation
1	Introduction to Game Theory Normal-Form Games Battle of the Sexes Beauty Contest	Essentials of Game Theory: Chapters 1 & 2 by Kevin Leyton-Brown and Yoav Shoham Rock, Paper, Scissors (The Simpsons) The Prisoners' Dilemma (Dilbert)
2	Introduction to Auctions Incomplete-information Games Bayesian Battle of the Sexes Second-price Auctions First-price Auctions (Uniform Case) Order Statistics and Revenue Equivalence	Essentials of Game Theory: Chapter 7, by Kevin Leyton-Brown and Yoav Shoham Bayesian Games & Games of Incomplete Information, by Mohammad T. Hagiaghayi The Common Prior Assumption Notes on Revenue Equivalence
3	Introduction to Mechanism Design The Revelation Principle Auction Design Goals The VCG Mechanism	Real Badminton Rally Fixed Badminton Rally Badminton Rule-Making Article
4	Welfare Maximization & Myerson's Lemma Myerson via the Envelope Theorem Myerson's Payment Characterization Applications of Myerson's Lemma Sponsored Search	Myerson's Lemma (Stanford CS 364A)
5	Revenue Maximization & Myerson's Theorem Myerson's Optimal Auction Applications of Myerson's Theorem	Myerson's Theorem (Stanford CS 364A)
6	Posted-Price Mechanisms Regular and MHR Distributions Inverse Transform Sampling Introduction to Approximation Algorithms Posted-Price Mechanisms: Bidder Behavior Posted-Price Mechanisms: Approximating Revenue Posted-Price Mechanisms: Approximating Welfare	Prior-Independent Approximations (Mechanism Design & Approximation)
7	Simple vs. Optimal Mechanisms Prophet Inequality Bulow and Klemperer's Theorem	Prophet Inequality and Bulow-Klemperer (Stanford CS 364A) An Economic View of Prophet Inequalities A Tutorial on Prophets and Secretaries
8	Final Projects Spectrum Auctions AdX Game
9	Iterative Auctions Combinatorial Auctions Ascending Auctions	The Magic of Auctions
10	EPIC Auctions SAAs with Additive Valuations EPIC Ascending Auctions SAAs with Additive Valuations, cont'd	EPIC Auctions (Stanford CS 364B)
11	Walrasian Equilibrium Unit-Demand Valuations and the CK Auction	Unit-Demand Valuations (Stanford CS 364B) CK Auction (Stanford CS 364B)