AMMA 2009 - The First Conference on Auctions, Market Mechanisms and Their Applications

Call for Participation: The First Conference on Auctions, Market Mechanisms and Their Applications (AMMA 2009)
May 8-9, Boston, USA

www.ammaconference.org

SCOPE:
The conference seeks papers devoted to issues that arise in all stages of deploying a market mechanism to solve a problem. This includes, but is not limited to, theoretical and empirical examination of questions such as:

* Is a market the right mechanism for the problem? What are the externalities involved? What are the issues with central planning?

* How should novel markets be organized? What is the "right" micro-structure for a given problem?

* What is the best way to provide incentives? Is (real) money necessary?

* Will the use of markets lead to the creation of artificial economies (cf. the recent bank run in Second Life) and what can we say about these economies?

* What new problems arise because of the special nature of these markets (e.g., from everyone wanting to use a cluster around the time of a conference deadline)?

* What protocols need to be in place for agents to participate in such markets (including everything from practical matters like integrating bidding protocols into the system to theoretical questions like incentive compatibility)?

* Is there a need for new mechanisms for specific applications (e.g., auctions used in sponsored search were never used in other settings)? If so, what properties of applications warrant such mechanisms?

In addition to more traditional academic papers, we are especially interested in experiences from the real world (case studies and new applications). Below are some potential areas, but the list is simply illustrative rather than exhaustive -- we welcome papers in all areas of market design.

Sample areas include:

* Content delivery networks
* Resource allocation in networks and distributed computing
* Sponsored search auctions
* Prediction markets
* Allocation of landing slots in congested airports
* Road pricing
* Student-school matching
* Kidney exchanges
* Combinatorial auctions

IMPORTANT DATES

Full Papers due: Oct 31, 2008
Notification of Acceptance: Dec 15, 2008
Camera-ready Manuscripts due: Jan 31, 2009
Conference Dates: May 8-9, 2009 (Boston)

STEERING COMMITTEE

Imrich Chlamtac, University of Trento and Create-Net
Peter Coles, Harvard Business School
Vincent Conitzer, Duke University
Sanmay Das, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Michael Ostrovsky, Stanford GSB
David Pennock, Yahoo! Research
Boleslaw Szymanski, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute