Algorithmic Game Theory

We then describe three broad areas of current inquiry by AI researchers in algorithmic game theory: game playing, social choice, and mechanism design. Finally, we give short summaries of each of the six articles appearing in this issue. The field took on its modern form in the 1940s and 1950s (von Neumann and Morgenstern 1947; Nash 1950, Kuhn 1953), with even earlier antecedents (such as Zermelo 1913 and von Neumann 1928). Although it has had occasional and significant overlap with computer science over the years, game theory received most of its early study by economists. Indeed, game theory now serves as perhaps the main analytical framework in microeconomic theory, as evidenced by its prominent role in economics textbooks (for example, Mas-Colell, Whinston, and Green 1995) and by the many Nobel prizes in economic sciences awarded to prominent game theorists.