Game Theory in Auction and Blockchain

Berkeley ACM A.M. Turing Laureate Colloquium

Andrew Chi-Chih Yao

Wednesday, November 14, 2018

Banatao Auditorium, Sutardja Dai Hall
4:00 – 5:00 pm

This lecture will be livestreamed in 306 Soda Hall and at
https://www.youtube.com/citris/live

Abstract

Game theory has provided a mathematical framework for addressing issues in many domains, including economics and distributed computing systems. In recent years the rise of novel commercial infrastructure, such as electronic auction (for on-line ads) and blockchain, has led to many new interdisciplinary studies involving algorithmic games. In this talk we discuss some recent work from this perspective. For example, is it true that more revenue can always be extracted from an auction where the bidders are more willing to pay than otherwise? Can more revenue be extracted when the bidders are more risk-tolerant than otherwise? We also present some new results on blockchain and game theory. These results help shed light on some structural questions in economics whose answers are non-obvious.

Biography

Andrew Chi-Chih Yao received a BS in Physics from National Taiwan University, a PhD in Physics from Harvard University, and a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Illinois. His research interests include analysis of algorithms, computational complexity, cryptography and quantum computing. From 1975 onward, Yao served on the faculty at MIT, Stanford, UC Berkeley, and during 1986 – 2004, as William and Edna Macaleer Professor of Engineering and Applied Science at Princeton University. In 2004, he left Princeton to become a Professor of Computer Science at Tsinghua Univeristy in Beijing. He is also a Distinguished Professor-at-Large at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Yao received the A.M. Turing Award in 2000 for his contributions to the theory of computation. He is a member of the US National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Chinese Academy of Sciences.