Summary
As more and more economic activity is moving to the Internet, familiar economic mechanisms are being deployed
at unprecedented scales of size, speed, and complexity. In many cases this new complexity becomes the defining
feature of the deployed economic mechanism and the quantitative difference becomes a key qualitative one.
A well-studied example of such situations is how the humble single-item auction suddenly becomes a
billion-times repeated online ad auction, or even becomes a combinatorial auction with exponentially
many possible outcomes. Similar complexity explosions occur with various markets, with information
dissemination, with pricing structures, and with many other economic mechanisms.
The aim of this proposal is to study the role and implications of such complexity and to start
developing a coherent economic theory that can handle it. We aim to identify various measures of
complexity that are crucial bottlenecks and study them. Examples of such complexities include the
amount of access to data, the length of the description of a mechanism, its communication requirements,
the cognitive complexity required from users, and, of course, the associated computational complexity.
On one hand we will attempt finding ways of effectively dealing with complexity when it is needed, and on
the other hand, attempt avoiding complexity, when possible, replacing it with ``simple'' alternatives
without incurring too large of a loss.
at unprecedented scales of size, speed, and complexity. In many cases this new complexity becomes the defining
feature of the deployed economic mechanism and the quantitative difference becomes a key qualitative one.
A well-studied example of such situations is how the humble single-item auction suddenly becomes a
billion-times repeated online ad auction, or even becomes a combinatorial auction with exponentially
many possible outcomes. Similar complexity explosions occur with various markets, with information
dissemination, with pricing structures, and with many other economic mechanisms.
The aim of this proposal is to study the role and implications of such complexity and to start
developing a coherent economic theory that can handle it. We aim to identify various measures of
complexity that are crucial bottlenecks and study them. Examples of such complexities include the
amount of access to data, the length of the description of a mechanism, its communication requirements,
the cognitive complexity required from users, and, of course, the associated computational complexity.
On one hand we will attempt finding ways of effectively dealing with complexity when it is needed, and on
the other hand, attempt avoiding complexity, when possible, replacing it with ``simple'' alternatives
without incurring too large of a loss.
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More information & hyperlinks
| Web resources: | https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/740282 |
| Start date: | 01-05-2017 |
| End date: | 30-04-2023 |
| Total budget - Public funding: | 2 026 706,00 Euro - 2 026 706,00 Euro |
Cordis data
Original description
As more and more economic activity is moving to the Internet, familiar economic mechanisms are being deployedat unprecedented scales of size, speed, and complexity. In many cases this new complexity becomes the defining
feature of the deployed economic mechanism and the quantitative difference becomes a key qualitative one.
A well-studied example of such situations is how the humble single-item auction suddenly becomes a
billion-times repeated online ad auction, or even becomes a combinatorial auction with exponentially
many possible outcomes. Similar complexity explosions occur with various markets, with information
dissemination, with pricing structures, and with many other economic mechanisms.
The aim of this proposal is to study the role and implications of such complexity and to start
developing a coherent economic theory that can handle it. We aim to identify various measures of
complexity that are crucial bottlenecks and study them. Examples of such complexities include the
amount of access to data, the length of the description of a mechanism, its communication requirements,
the cognitive complexity required from users, and, of course, the associated computational complexity.
On one hand we will attempt finding ways of effectively dealing with complexity when it is needed, and on
the other hand, attempt avoiding complexity, when possible, replacing it with ``simple'' alternatives
without incurring too large of a loss.
Status
CLOSEDCall topic
ERC-2016-ADGUpdate Date
27-04-2024
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