Preface

This book covers an area that straddles two fields, algorithms and game theory, and has applications in several others, including networking and artificial intelligence. Its text is pitched at a beginning graduate student in computer science - we hope that this makes the book accessible to readers across a wide range of areas. We started this project with the belief that the time was ripe for a book that clearly develops some of the central ideas and results of algorithmic game theory - a book that can be used as a textbook for the variety of courses that were already being offered at many universities. We felt that the only way to produce a book of such breadth in a reasonable amount of time was to invite many experts from this area to contribute chapters to a comprehensive volume on the topic. This book is partitioned into four parts: the first three parts are devoted to core areas, while the fourth covers a range of topics mostly focusing on applications. Chapter 1 serves as a preliminary chapter and it introduces basic game-theoretic definitions that are used throughout the book. The first chapters of Parts II and III provide introductions and preliminaries for the respective parts. The other chapters are largely independent of one another. The authors were requested to focus on a few results highlighting the main issues and techniques, rather than provide comprehensive surveys.