DEPARTMENT OF ECONOMICS

2008 Erwin Plein Nemmers Prize in Economics

Lecture and Conference - November 5-6, 2009

"The Promise and Problems of Market Design"

Paul Milgrom
Stanford University

Market design has become an exciting area of economics research, with many of its findings useful for setting detailed rules in real markets. For matching markets, most proposed designs aim to be "straightforward" - making it a dominant strategy for participants to report information truthfully. But some recent matching and auction designs sacrifice incentive-compatibility conditions to give priority to various other desiderata. The lecture reviewed the goals of market design and the unavoidable trade-offs that are sometimes required, and explored how economists should seek to resolve these trade-offs.

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Conference

"Conference in Honor of Paul Milgrom"