Ron Lavi

Senior Lecturer
Faculty of Industrial Engineering and Management
The Technion -- Israel Institute of Technology
Israel

E-mail: ronlavi@ie.technion.ac.il
Office: Bloomfield 302
Phone: 04-8294410

Research Interests

I'm working on subjects on the border of Computer Science, Game Theory, and Economics. This broad
research area is usually called Algorithmic Game Theory.

I study models that integrate computational and algorithmic theory with game theory and microeconomic
theory. Some representative questions that my research explores are: (i) What are the limits of ex-post
implementability in private value settings. (ii) What other solution concepts can we successfully use in
a distribution free analysis? (iii) What types of dynamic and detail free mechanisms can we construct?
The motivation for these questions arise from Auction Theory, a research area with theoretical as well
as practical relevance. Here is a more detailed research statement.

Few relevant links:

A short article (in Hebrew) that explains what Game Theory is, and what is it good for.
A nice presentation (session IP4) on the general area of Algorithmic Game Theory that surveys
many of the research questions that interest me.
A nice blog on Algorithmic Game Theory, also a good place to find many relevant links.

Short Bibliography

I have a PhD in Computer Science from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
After graduating, I did a post-doc at Caltech's Social and Information Sciences Laboratory (SISL).
I joined the Technion in August 2006. Here is a full CV, and, on the informal side, some pictures.

Courses

Auction Theory (96573)
Auction Theory for MBA (98753)
Introduction to Financial Management (94564)

Students

Marina May
Liri Finkelstein
Alex Bogautov
Avinoam Marom
Ira Shein (M.Sc. 2010, "Bayesian Analysis of Sequential Auctions Under Future Uncertainties")

Students that are interested in doing research on the above mentioned subjects are welcomed to apply.
Especially talented students may get extra funding on top of the Technion's funding.

Recent Working Papers

Side-Communication Yields Efficiency of Ascending Auctions: The Two-Items Case
By Ron Lavi and Sigal Oren
PowerPoint Presentation

Efficiency Levels in Sequential Auctions with Dynamic Arrivals
By Ron Lavi and Ella Segev
PowerPoint Presentation

An Optimal Lower Bound for Anonymous Scheduling
By Itai Ashlagi, Shahar Dobzinski, and Ron Lavi
(preliminary version in ACM-EC'09)
PowerPoint Presentation

Multi-unit Auctions with Budget Limits
By Shahar Dobzinski, Ron Lavi, and Noam Nisan
(preliminary version in FOCS'08)

Journal Publications

Position Auctions with Budgets: Existence and Uniqueness
By Itai Ashlagi, Mark Braverman, Avinatan Hassidim, Ron Lavi, and Moshe Tennenholtz
The B.E. Journal of Theoretical Economics (Advances), 10(1), Article 20, 2010.
PowerPoint Presentation

Truthful Mechanism Design for Multi-Dimensional Scheduling via Cycle Monotonicity
By Ron Lavi and Chaitanya Swamy
Games and Economic Behavior, 67(1), pp. 99 -- 124, 2009.
PowerPoint Presentation

Two Simplified Proofs for Roberts' Theorem
By Ron Lavi, Ahuva Mu'alem, and Noam Nisan
Social Choice and Welfare, 32, pp. 407 -- 423, 2009.

Single Value Combinatorial Auctions and Implementation in Undominated Strategies
By Moshe Babaioff, Ron Lavi, and Elan Pavlov
Journal of the ACM, 56(1), pp. 4:1 -- 4:32, 2009.
PowerPoint Presentation

Weak Monotonicity characterizes deterministic dominant strategy implementation
By S. Bikhchandani, S. Chatterji, R. Lavi, A. Mu'alem, N. Nisan, and A. Sen
Econometrica, 74(4), pp. 1109 -- 1132, 2006.
See also the supplementary material for this paper.

Competitive Analysis of Incentive Compatible On-Line Auctions
By Ron Lavi and Noam Nisan
Theoretical Computer Science 310(1), pp. 159-180, 2004.
PowerPoint Presentation

Book Chapters and Review Papers

Mechanism Design
By Ron Lavi
Encyclopedia of Complexity and System Science, Springer, 2009

Algorithmic Mechanism Design
By Ron Lavi
Encyclopedia of Algorithms, Springer, 2008

Computationally-Efficient Approximation Mechanisms
By Ron Lavi
Algorithmic Game Theory, Cambridge University Press, 2007

Searching for the Possibility – Impossibility Border of Truthful Mechanism Design
By Ron Lavi
ACM SIGecom Exchanges 7(1), 2007

Publications in Refereed Conferences

Theses

Ph.D. thesis: Auction Theory in Computational Settings , August 2004.
M.Sc. thesis: The Home Model for Load Balancing in a Computing Cluster , October 1999.