An Introduction to the Theory of Mechanism Design

very good introduction

"It may seem that we have gone to considerable length to derive a disappointing result, namely, a result that does not oer the seller any more sophisticated selling mechanisms than we are familiar with from elementary microeconomics. However, apart from introducing some technical tools that we use later in more complicated contexts, the reader should appreciate that we have uncovered a rather sophisticated rationale for a familiar everyday phenomenon. This is perhaps analogous to invoking Newton's law of gravity as an explanation of the fact that apples fall o apple trees. The fact is familiar, but the explanation is non-obvious. "

Cannot be more useful for a economics phd.

:)

Very nice reference for a field course or even the first-year sequence.

This is a great book to introduce advanced undergrads or grad students to mechanism design. It makes a good reference to prepare a section of a market design class.

I like the content of the book. It is --to my taste-- the only good textbook on mechanism design. It covers not all topics within mechanism design but exactly those that I personally would like to be covered. It is well written and the derivations are done step by step.I subtract two stars because of the following: The typeface is hideous. If a publisher tried to ruin a book, he would print it exactly the way this book is printed. I had got some preprint pdf of the book before it was published and this pdf looked way better! The content has two smaller weaknesses: First, I would have preferred a few more exercises. Second, the first chapter uses quite advanced mathematics to derive the optimal monopoly pricing scheme. My students have not seen much of this and get unnecessarily scared in week one. The unfortunate part of this is that some of the math machinery is not even necessary: The usual integration by parts trick, for example, would have made it unnecessary to argue via "extreme points" of a set of functions.