Abstract

A short history of equilibrium computation. The computation of economic equilibrium is making a spectacular comeback in economics, mathematics and computer science. The availability of massive real-time datasets and the affordability of computing power, including parallel computation, has made it possible to implement and build on an effort that had been stalled since the end of the 1970s. But even more than the new technical possibilities, it is the novel applications to online platforms and market design tools that led to the surge of interest in computation. Pricing engines like Uber’s, matchmakers like OkCupid, allocation mechanisms like those that are used by public school districts – all need to compute an equilibrium problem.

While the problem of equilibrium computation is hard in general, a particular instance of the problem, namely the gross substitutes property, makes it analytically tractable and computable in practice, while able to cover a large number of applications including optimal transport, multinomial choice models, matching, hedonic models, and trade equilibrium problems. The goal of this workshop is to bring together researchers working on the frontier of the current knowledge in this topic, consolidate the theory, present state-of-the-art applications, and present the latest algorithms. It will connect several different mathematical fields:

• 1. Optimal transport
• 2. Stable marriage problem and lattice theory
• 3. Systems of nonlinear equations on networks, M-maps
• 4. Discrete convexity

A number of introductory lectures will set the stage before moving on to the presentation of research papers.