The global geometry of the moduli space of curves

Abstract

This is a survey written for the Proceedings of the AMS Summer Institute in Algebraic Geometry held in Seattle in 2005. Topics discussed in the survey include the ample and the effective cone of the moduli space of curves, Kodaira dimension, Slope Conjecture, log canonical models etc.Comment: 23 pages. Minor revisions. To appear in the Proceedings of the AMS Summer Research Institute in Algebraic Geometry-Seattle 200