SPECIAL TIME: 2:30 -- 3:20 pm,  Friday, Jan 16, 2009

PLACE: CSE 503  

SPEAKER: Amin Saberi
         Stanford University

TITLE: Game Dynamics, Equilibrium Selection and Network Structure

ABSTRACT: 
Coordination games describe social or economic interactions
in which the adoption of a common strategy has a higher payoff. They
are classically used to model the spread of conventions, behaviors,
and technologies in societies.

Since the pioneering work of Ellison (1993), specific network
structures have been shown to have dramatic influence on the
convergence of such dynamics. In this talk, I will try to make these
results more precise and use the intuition for designing effective
algorithms.

Time permitting, I will also talk about similar dynamics in congestion
games and show how they can refine the notion of the price of anarchy
or the price of stability and offer a new way for measuring the
inefficiency of equilibria.