Anyone do “mechanism design” in their day job? What are jobs that have aspects of this? (Besides implicitly, like every web startup ever, which is still interesting to think about.)
Aside from academic economists and computer scientists? :D Auction design has been a big success story, enough so that microeconomic theorists like Hal Varian and Preston McAfee now work at Google full time. Microsoft and other tech companies also have research staff working specifically on mechanism design.
As far as people that should have some awareness (whether they do or not): anyone implementing an online reputation system, anyone allocating resources (like a university allocating courses to students or the US Army allocating ROTC graduates to its branches), or anyone designing government regulation.
Anyone do “mechanism design” in their day job? What are jobs that have aspects of this? (Besides implicitly, like every web startup ever, which is still interesting to think about.)
Aside from academic economists and computer scientists? :D Auction design has been a big success story, enough so that microeconomic theorists like Hal Varian and Preston McAfee now work at Google full time. Microsoft and other tech companies also have research staff working specifically on mechanism design.
As far as people that should have some awareness (whether they do or not): anyone implementing an online reputation system, anyone allocating resources (like a university allocating courses to students or the US Army allocating ROTC graduates to its branches), or anyone designing government regulation.
Management, especially high-level management. This basically what CEOs of large companies are supposed to do.
Politicians (and, by implications, lobbyists, consultants, think tanks, etc.).