FMitF: Track I: Formal Verification for Mechanism Design

Cornell University, Ithaca NY

Investigators

Abstract

The field of mechanism design studies how to build algorithms to solve economic problems, such as selling an item at an auction, or matching buyers to sellers in a marketplace. This project aims to develop formal verification methods for economic mechanisms, addressing two main technical challenges. First, mechanisms are complex: mechanisms operate on richly structured, and often quantitative, data. Second, mechanisms accept inputs controlled by economic agents who may have incentives to manipulate the inputs they report. Verifying economically-relevant properties of mechanisms requires assuming and reasoning about how agents behave. This project has broader impacts along two dimensions. First, as mechanisms are increasingly used in high-stakes settings to match people to scarce resources (e.g., residents to hospitals, students to schools, and even organ donors to recipients), the risks and consequences of implementation errors increase. This project aims to develop methods to verify that economic mechanisms are implemented correctly. Second, since mechanisms aim to allocate resources in a socially acceptable manner, transparency and accountability are paramount. Methods developed by this project could help independent auditors certify that mechanisms behave correctly. Further, this project incorporates integrated education and outreach activities spanning both computer science and economics. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.