World Scientific Publishing Company Game Theory And Mechanism Design (IISc Lecture Notes Series): 4

I am very pleased that Y Narahari has written this lovely text, which presents the fundamentals of game theory and mechanism design clearly and concisely. In doing so, Dr Narahari has performed a great service to students and researchers interested in the lively interface between engineering sciences and economics. - Eric Maskin, Harvard University, USA This is a splendid book for engineers by an engineer. It has the ideal choice of topics and emphasis that reflects the driving themes in game theory, such as mechanism design, that have lead the revival of game theory in recent times and its multifarious applications in cybercommerce and allied areas. The lucidly written byte-sized chapters rich with examples and historical details make it an exciting read. This is the right book at the right time. - Vivek Borkar, Indian Institute of Technology-Bombay, India This book covers a subject which now straddles at least three subjects — Economics, Mathematics and Computer Science. It is a comprehensive presentation for a wide range of readers from the novice to experts in related areas who want to inform themselves of Game Theory and Mechanism Design. The book has a very readable from-first-principles approach to topics which commendably illuminates while not sacrificing rigor. - Ravi Kannan, Microsoft Research and Indian Institute of Science, India Narahari's book is a beautifully written text that handles both introductory material and advanced topics well. - Preston McAfee, Microsoft Game Theory and Mechanism Design is impressive in its broad coverage of cooperative games, non-cooperative games and mechanism design from an engineering perspective. The book is rich in examples and exercises, and couples historical appraisals of the evolution of the field with careful mathematical proofs. It should be valuable both as a graduate text and for reference. - Chris Dance, Xerox Research Centre Europe, France This book offers a self-sufficient treatment of a key tool, game theory and mechanism design, to model, analyze, and solve centralized as well as decentralized design problems involving multiple autonomous agents that interact strategically in a rational and intelligent way. The contents of the book provide a sound foundation of game theory and mechanism design theory which clearly represent the science behind traditional as well as emerging economic applications for the society. The importance of the discipline of game theory has been recognized through numerous Nobel prizes in economic sciences being awarded to game theorists, including the 2005, 2007, and 2012 prizes. The book distills the marvelous contributions of these and other celebrated game theorists and presents it in a way that can be easily understood even by senior undergraduate students. A unique feature of the book is its detailed coverage of mechanism design which is the art of designing a game among strategic agents so that a social goal is realized in an equilibrium of the induced game. Another feature is a large number of illustrative examples that are representative of both classical and modern applications of game theory and mechanism design. The book also includes informative biographical sketches of game theory legends, and is specially customized to a general engineering audience. After a thorough reading of this book, readers would be able to apply game theory and mechanism design in a principled and mature way to solve relevant problems in computer science (esp, artificial intelligence/machine learning), computer engineering, operations research, industrial engineering and microeconomics.