Friday, August 16, 2024

[DMANET] Workshop on Simplicity in Mechanism Design and Preference Elicitation

Workshop on Simplicity in Mechanism Design and Preference Elicitation
October 7 - 8, 2024
DIMACS Center, CoRE Building, Rutgers University
Organizers:
Vasilis Gkatzelis, Drexel University
Shengwu Li, Harvard University
Daniel Schoepflin, DIMACS

Presented in association with the SF on Mechanisms & Algorithms to Augment Human Decision Making<http://dimacs.rutgers.edu/programs/sf/mechanisms>.
*********************************************************************
Workshop Announcement:

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, incentive compatibility may not be enough: 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.

In this workshop we will focus on all these aspects of preference elicitation, bringing together an interdisciplinary set of speakers and attendees from economics, computer science, and operations research. We 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 Participation:
The workshop is open to all, but you must register to attend. You can register using the button at the bottom of the workshop webpage.

Call for posters: The workshop will feature a poster session. If you would like to present a poster, please visit the workshop webpage 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. Please see the workshop webpage to apply. Applications must be received by September 4, 2024.

*********************************************************************

Workshop web site (including registration):
http://dimacs.rutgers.edu/events/details?eID=1767

**********************************************************
*
* Contributions to be spread via DMANET are submitted to
*
* DMANET@zpr.uni-koeln.de
*
* Replies to a message carried on DMANET should NOT be
* addressed to DMANET but to the original sender. The
* original sender, however, is invited to prepare an
* update of the replies received and to communicate it
* via DMANET.
*
* DISCRETE MATHEMATICS AND ALGORITHMS NETWORK (DMANET)
* http://www.zaik.uni-koeln.de/AFS/publications/dmanet/
*
**********************************************************