What is the best way to auction an asset? How should a group of people organize themselves to ensure the best provision of public goods? How should exchanges be organized? In An Introduction to the Theory of Mechanism Design, Tilman Börgers addresses these questions and more through an exploration of the economic theory of mechanism design. Mechanism design is reverse game theory. Whereas game theory takes the rules of the game as a given and makes predictions about the behavior of strategic players, the theory of mechanism design goes a step further and selects the optimal rules of the game.
A relatively new economic theory, mechanism design studies the instrument itself as well as the results of the instrument. An Introduction to the Theory of Mechanism Design provides rigorous but accessible explanations of classic results in the theory of mechanism design, such as Myerson's theorem on expected revenue maximizing auctions, Myerson and Satterthwaite's theorem on the impossibility of ex post efficient bilateral trade with asymmetric information, and Gibbard and Satterthwaite's theorem on the non-existence of dominant strategy voting mechanisms. Börgers also provides an examination of the frontiers of current research in the area with an original and unified perspective that will appeal to advanced students of economics.
"Tilman Borgers offers the first book-length introduction into the theory of mechanism design. Written in a very personal and masterful style, he carefully covers the main developments in theory of mechanism design-the theory of how to choose the rules of the game-over the past decades. It will be an ideal textbook for advanced undergraduate and graduate courses for many years to come."
Dirk Bergemann, Douglass and Marion Campbell Professor of Economics and Chair, Yale University
"Tilman Borgers gives a beautifully lucid and elegant development of mechanism design in this wonderful book. His masterful exposition provides a unified and cohesive treatment of modern mechanism design, starting from first principles and working through topics at the leading edge of the research frontier. This book is a delight and an invaluable resource for those new to the field and experts alike."
Chris Shannon, Richard and Lisa Steiny Professor of Economics and Professor of Mathematics, University of California, Berkeley
"This book provides an integrated treatment of the theory of mechanism design by a leading practitioner in this area. It covers the core theory together with chapters on recent developments in robust mechanism design and dynamic mechanism design. The core theory is built up in an original and pedagogically successful way, starting with screening in chapter 2 and immediately using those tools to develop leading applications of Bayesian mechanism design-auctions, bilateral trade, and public goods-in chapter 3. These results can then naturally be adapted to dominant strategies in chapter 4. Chapters 5, 6, and 7 then deal with the general theories of incentive compatibility, Bayesian mechanism design, and dominant strategy mechanism design.
The first seven chapters of the book focus on the quasi-linear environments studied in most economic applications, with more general environments ('non-transferable utility') postponed to chapter 8. This ordering of material reflects not the historical development of the subject but a natural and effective path to learn the material. Borgers develops a unified treatment of core material without attempting to be exhaustive. Valuable endnotes at the end of each chapter then explain the historical context and relation to the literature more broadly. It will serve as an excellent textbook for graduate students and advanced undergraduates, and an invaluable reference for researchers."
Stephen Morris, Professor of Economics, Princeton University

Distinguished physicist examines emotive significance of time, time order of mechanics, time direction of thermodynamics and microstatistics, time direction of macrostatistics, and time of quantum physics. Analytic methods of scientific philosophy in investigation of probability, quantum mechanics, theory of relativity, causality. 1971 edition.

Goodbye to Berlin is a short novel by Christopher Isherwood. It is often published together with The Last of Mr. Norris in a collection called The Berlin Stories.
The novel, a semiautobiographical account of Isherwood's time in 1930s Berlin, describes pre-Nazi Germany and the people he met.
Moving to Germany to work on his novel, Isherwood soon becomes involved with many different German citizens: The caring landlady, Frau. Shroeder; the "divinely decadent" Sally Bowles, a young English woman who sings in the local Cabaret; Natalia Laundauer, the rich, Jewish heiress of a prosperous family business; Peter and Otto, a couple struggling to accept their relationship in light of the rise of the Nazis.
The book, first published in 1939, ironically highlights the groups of people who would be most at risk from Nazi intimidation.

In a panoramic and pioneering reappraisal, Pieter Judson shows why the Habsburg Empire mattered so much, for so long, to millions of Central Europeans. Across divides of language, religion, region, and history, ordinary women and men felt a common attachment to their empire, while bureaucrats, soldiers, politicians, and academics devised inventive solutions to the challenges of governing Europe s second largest state. In the decades before and after its dissolution, some observers belittled the Habsburg Empire as a dysfunctional patchwork of hostile ethnic groups and an anachronistic imperial relic. Judson examines their motives and explains just how wrong these rearguard critics were.
Rejecting fragmented histories of nations in the making, this bold revision surveys the shared institutions that bridged difference and distance to bring stability and meaning to the far-flung empire. By supporting new schools, law courts, and railroads, along with scientific and artistic advances, the Habsburg monarchs sought to anchor their authority in the cultures and economies of Central Europe. A rising standard of living throughout the empire deepened the legitimacy of Habsburg rule, as citizens learned to use the empire s administrative machinery to their local advantage. Nationalists developed distinctive ideas about cultural difference in the context of imperial institutions, yet all of them claimed the Habsburg state as their empire.
The empire s creative solutions to governing its many lands and peoples as well as the intractable problems it could not solve left an enduring imprint on its successor states in Central Europe. Its lessons remain no less important today."

Generative Programming (GP) offers the promise of moving from "one-of-a-kind" software systems to the semi-automated manufacture of wide varieties of software -- essentially, an assembly line for software systems. GP's goal is to model software system families and build software modules such that, given particular requirements specs, highly customized and optimized intermediate or end products can be constructed on demand. This is the first book to cover Generative Programming in depth. The authors, leaders in their field, introduce the two-stage GP development cycle: one stage for designing and implementing a generative domain model, and another for using the model to build concrete systems. They review key differences between generative modeling and processes used for "one-of-a-kind" systems. Next, they introduce key GP concepts such as feature models, and demonstrate "generic programming" techniques for creating components which lend themselves to easy combination and reuse. The book also introduces Aspect Oriented Programming, which allows developers to solve key recurring problems in traditional O-O development; and presents metaprogramming techniques for building powerful program generators. Three detailed case studies demonstrate the entire generative development cycle, from analysis to implementation.