Mechanism design

Mechanism design is a field that applies economics and game theory to the design of incentive structures, structures—or mechanisms. Mechanisms are often designedmechanisms—in order to achieve specific social objectives. Conventionally, mechanism design assumes that players have private information about their preferences and act rationally so as to maximize those preferences.

Mechanism design has been used to improve social outcomes in domains such as medical residency matching,^[1] school choice,^[2] organ donation,^[3] and voting. Mechanisms have also been proposed to improve the provision of public goods.goods.^[4]

Further reading

Peters, Dominik (2019) Economic design for effective altruism, in Jean-François Laslier et al. (eds.) The Future of Economic Design, Cham: Springer, pp. 381–388.

Wiblin, Robert & Keiran Harris (2019) Radical institutional reforms that make capitalism & democracy work better, and how to get them, 80,000 Hours, February 8.

Mechanism Design for Social Good (MD4SG). An initiative using techniques from algorithms, optimization, and mechanism design to improve access for marginalized groups.