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This thesis presents a significant contribution to decentralized resource allocation problems with strategic agents. The study focused on three classes of problems arising in communication networks. (C1). Unicast service provisioning in wired networks. (C2). Multi-rate multicast service provisioning in wired networks. (C3). Power allocation and spectrum sharing in multi-user multi-channel wireless communication systems. Problems in (C1) are market problems; problems in (C2) are a combination of markets and public goods; problems in (C3) are public goods. Dr. Kakhbod developed game forms/mechanisms for unicast and multi-rate multicast service provisioning that possess specific properties. First, the allocations corresponding to all Nash equilibria (NE) of the games induced by the mechanisms are optimal solutions of the corresponding centralized allocation problems, where the objective is the maximization of the sum of the agents´ utilities. Second, the strategic agents voluntarily participate in the allocation process. Third, the budget is balanced at the allocations corresponding to all NE of the game induced by the mechanism as well as at all other feasible allocations. For the power allocation and spectrum sharing problem, he developed a game form that possesses the second and third properties as detailed above along with a fourth property: the allocations corresponding to all NE of the game induced by the mechanism are Pareto optimal. The thesis contributes to the state of the art of mechanism design theory. In particular, designing efficient mechanisms for the class of problems that are a combination of markets and public goods, for the first time, have been addressed in this thesis. The exposition, although highly rigorous and technical, is elegant and insightful which makes this thesis work easily accessible to those just entering this field and will also be much appreciated by experts in the field.

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Introduction.- Motivation.- Key issues and challenges in resource allocation.- Contribution of the thesis.- Organization of the thesis.- What is Implementation Theory?.- Preliminaries.- Game Forms/Mechanisms.- Implementation in an appropriate equilibrium concept.- Implementation in Nash Equilibrium and Maskin´s Mechanism.- Interpreting Nash Equilibrium.- Desirable Properties of Game Forms.- Contribution of the chapter.- Comparison with related work.- Organization of the chapter.- The unicast problem with strategic network users, Problem Formulation.- The centralized problem.- The decentralized problem with strategic users.- A Mechanism for Rate Allocation.- Specification of the mechanism.- Discussion/Interpretation of the Mechanism.- Properties of the Mechanism.- Implementation of the decentralized mechanism.- An Extension.- Introduction.- Contribution of the Chapter.- Comparison with related work.- Organization of the chapter.- The Model and Objective.- The Model.- Objective.- A Mechanism for Power Allocation and Spectrum Sharing.- Interpretation of the Mechanism.- Properties of The Mechanism.- Introduction.- Motivation and Challenges.- Why is strategic behavior justied?.- Contribution of the chapter.- Comparison with related work.- Organization of the chapter.- The multi-rate multicast problem with strategic network users, Problem Formulation.- The centralized problem.- The decentralized problem with strategic users.- Key features/natures of the problem.- A Mechanism for Rate Allocation.- Guidelines for the design of the mechanism.- Specification of the mechanism.- Discussion/Interpretation of the Mechanism.- Properties of the Mechanism.- Summary.- Future directions.- Algorithmic issues.- Dynamic environments.- Beyond quasi-linear forms.

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Ali Kakhbod completed his PhD at the University of Michigan.

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