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Experimental studies have shown the ubiquity of altruistic behavior in human societies. The social structure is a fundamental ingredient to understand the degree of altruism displayed by the members of a society, in contrast to…
We present a simplified model for the exploitation of finite resources by interacting agents, where each agent receives a random fraction of the available resources. An extremal dynamics ensures that the poorest agent has a chance to change…
We study the optimal control of storage which is used for arbitrage, i.e. for buying a commodity when it is cheap and selling it when it is expensive. Our particular concern is with the management of energy systems, although the results are…
In the electrical grid, the distribution system is themost vulnerable to severe weather events. Well-placed and coordinatedupgrades, such as the combination of microgrids, systemhardening and additional line redundancy, can greatly reduce…
Using a model in which agents compete to develop a potentially dangerous new technology (AI), we study how changes in the pricing of factors of production (computational resources) affect agents' strategies, particularly their spending on…
Institutions and investors are constantly faced with the challenge of appropriately distributing endowments. No budget is limitless and optimising overall spending without sacrificing positive outcomes has been approached and resolved using…
Recent research in the social sciences has identified situations in which small changes in the way that information is provided to consumers can have large aggregate effects on behavior. This has been promoted in popular media in areas of…
Social and professional networks affect labor market dynamics, knowledge diffusion and new business creation. To understand the determinants of how these networks are formed in the first place, we analyze a unique dataset of business cards…
This study explores the monotonicity of adaptive clinching auctions -- a key mechanism in budget-constrained auctions -- with respect to fluctuations in the number of bidders. Specifically, we investigate how the addition of new bidders…
How to form groups in a mobility system that offers shared rides, and how to split the costs within the travellers of a group, are non-trivial tasks, as two objectives conflict: 1) minimising the total costs of the system, and 2) making…
The modernization of the power system introduces technologies that may improve the system's efficiency by enhancing the capabilities of users. Despite their potential benefits, such technologies can have a negative impact. This subject has…
We study the optimal joint intervention of a planner who can influence both the standalone marginal utilities of agents in a network and the weights of the links connecting them. The welfare-maximizing intervention displays two key…
Despite the potential of online sharing economy platforms such as Uber, Lyft, or Foodora to democratize the labor market, these services are often accused of fostering unfair working conditions and low wages. These problems have been…
We consider "time-of-use" pricing as a technique for matching supply and demand of temporal resources with the goal of maximizing social welfare. Relevant examples include energy, computing resources on a cloud computing platform, and…
Game theory has emerged as a fruitful paradigm for the design of networked multiagent systems. A fundamental component of this approach is the design of agents' utility functions so that their self-interested maximization results in a…
Blockchain, an emerging decentralized security system, has been applied in many applications, such as bitcoin, smart grid, and Internet-of-Things. However, running the mining process may cost too much energy consumption and computing…
Motivated by the success of the serial dictatorship mechanism in social choice settings, we explore its usefulness in tackling various combinatorial optimization problems. We do so by considering an abstract model, in which a set of agents…
We study the quality of outcomes in repeated games when the population of players is dynamically changing and participants use learning algorithms to adapt to the changing environment. Game theory classically considers Nash equilibria of…
How does one allocate a collection of resources to a set of strategic agents in a fair and efficient manner without using money? For in many scenarios it is not feasible to use money to compensate agents for otherwise unsatisfactory…
Large scale electricity storage is set to play an increasingly important role in the management of future energy networks. A major aspect of the economics of such projects is captured in arbitrage, i.e. buying electricity when it is cheap…