Workshop on Simplicity in Mechanism Design and Preference Elicitation
Date: October 7 - 8, 2024
Location: DIMACS Center, Rutgers University
Organizers: Vasilis Gkatzelis (Drexel), Shengwu Li (Harvard), and Daniel Schoepflin (DIMACS)
Description: A common obstacle in the design of effective mechanisms in the presence of strategic self-interested agents is the need for preference elicitation. This often arises when the participating agents hold some of the information regarding their private preferences that the designer needs in order to reach a desired outcome. The designer could simply ask the agents to volunteer this information, but there are many reasons why this may be against their best interest, motivating them either to deny this request or to strategically volunteer false information. The most obvious obstacle is that the mechanism needs to be "incentive compatible", i.e., to appropriately reward or penalize the agent so that their optimal strategy is to report the true information. However, even if a mechanism is incentive compatible, the agents may still hesitate to participate or to report truthfully, unless the mechanism also possesses other appealing properties such as i) simplicity, which would allow the agents to easily identify their optimal strategy, ii) transparency, so that the agents need not trust the designer in order to participate, and iii) privacy, so that the agents need not worry about the ways in which their data is going to be used and the privacy cost that they will incur as a result.
This workshop will focus on all of these aspects of preference elicitation, bringing together an interdisciplinary set of speakers and attendees from economics, computer science, and operations research. Participants will discuss ways to formalize simplicity, privacy, and transparency, and examine their implications using both theory and data. One particular focus is the design of dynamic mechanisms with better incentive properties than their static equivalents.
Call for Posters: The workshop will feature a poster session. If you would like to present a poster, please visit the workshop webpage<http://dimacs.rutgers.edu/events/details?eID=1767> for information on how to apply. The deadline for submitting a poster is September 15, 2024. There are limited funds available to support travel by those whose attendance is contingent on support. Applications for support must be received by September 4, 2024. Students in need of support to attend are not require to present a poster to receive support, but those presenting posters will be prioritized for support.
Workshop webpage: http://dimacs.rutgers.edu/events/details?eID=1767
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