Open Lecture — Learning and Efficiency in Games

Selfish behavior can often lead to a suboptimal outcome for all participants, a phenomenon illustrated by classical examples in game theory such as the prisoner's dilemma.  In this talk, we'll consider how to quantify the impact of strategic user behavior on overall performance in games including traffic routing as well as online auctions.  Over the last decade we have developed a good understanding of how to quantify the impact of strategic user behavior on overall performance by studying the stable Nash equilibria of games.  We will show how this approach extends to providing robust guarantees for performance even when the system is not in equilibrium, and even when the population of players is dynamically changing, and where participants have to adapt to the dynamic environment, assuming players use a form of learning that helps them to adapt.

Light refreshments will be served before the lecture at 3:30 p.m.