Economics and Computational Analysis of Game Theory and Mechanism Design

From incentive engineering in the sharing economy to ensuring fairness in resource allocation, the traditional economy is reflected in new forms on the internet. In studying internet economics, classical game theory needs to be reformed to investigate its new features. This project employs artificial intelligence, uncertainty analysis, and economics to examine important questions that arise in internet economics.

This project aims to align the well-established field of algorithm design with the new reality of game theory and multi-agent systems. Recent research defines and analyses specific internet interactions as a game, derives the associated equilibria, and examines how the efficiency of an online system degrades due to the self-interested behaviour of its agents. This research agenda has found applications in spectrum auctions, cryptocurrencies, prediction markets, reputation systems, matching markets, crowdsourcing, social choice, smart cities, and citizen science.

This project covers a wide range of topics and can be customised to investigate any of the above-mentioned topics. It will build accountable, responsible, and explainable systems for important real-life problems, which take into account individual agents’ preferences, incentives, and constraints. This will be done by analysing the decisive factors in agents’ decision-making processes by causal inference, examining how sensitive a model is to variables by sensitivity analysis, and evaluating the efficiency and fairness by algorithmic approaches.

The outcome of the PhD project will be in the form of explainable artificial intelligence tools for emerging digital marketplaces and advanced decision support to individual agents and market designers, scientific output (peer-reviewed articles), and influence on cross-disciplinary research.

This project is associated with the UKRI Centre for Doctoral Training (CDT) in Accountable, Responsible and Transparent AI (ART-AI). We value people from different life experiences with a passion for research. The CDT's mission is to graduate diverse specialists with perspectives who can go out in the world and make a difference.

Informal enquiries about the project should be directed to Dr Zhang. 

Successful applicants will have a background in computer science, economics, mathematics, or other related subjects, and an interest in computational game theory and multi-agent systems.

Formal applications should be accompanied by a research proposal and made via the University of Bath’s online application form. Enquiries about the application process should be sent to art-ai-applications@bath.ac.uk.

Start date: 2 October 2023.