How can we allocate goods to the people who value them most when those values are private? A classical approach is to design auctions in which reporting one’s true preferences is optimal, regardless of what the other participants do. Such auctions are called strategyproof. Their study dates back to the work of William Vickrey and was recognized by the 1996 Nobel Prize in Economics. 

However, recognizing that reporting truthfully is optimal for bidders may itself require substantial reasoning. Can we design auctions in which the best strategy is easy to identify? Obvious strategyproofness, introduced by Li [American Economic Review, 2017], gives a mathematical formulation of this question. In this talk, I will introduce this notion and study the tradeoff between satisfying it and allocating goods to the people who value them the most. 

No background in economics or game theory will be assumed.