Related papers: Conducting Truthful Surveys, Cheaply
We study statistical parameter estimation in the setting of data markets. A buyer seeks to estimate a parameter based on samples that can be purchased from competing providers that differ in their data quality and provision costs. When…
We study a setup in which a system operator hires a sensor to exert costly effort to collect accurate measurements of a value of interest over time. At each time, the sensor is asked to report his observation to the operator, and is…
We study the design of autonomous agents that are capable of deceiving outside observers about their intentions while carrying out tasks in stochastic, complex environments. By modeling the agent's behavior as a Markov decision process, we…
The quality of probabilistic forecasts is crucial for decision-making under uncertainty. While proper scoring rules incentivize truthful reporting of precise forecasts, they fall short when forecasters face epistemic uncertainty about their…
We study whether a planner can robustly implement a state-contingent social choice function when (i) agents must incur a cost to learn the state and (ii) the planner faces uncertainty regarding agents' preferences over outcomes, information…
We consider a principal agent project selection problem with asymmetric information. There are $N$ projects and the principal must select exactly one of them. Each project provides some profit to the principal and some payoff to the agent…
A crucial part of data analysis is the validation of the resulting estimators, in particular, if several competing estimators need to be compared. Whether an estimator can be objectively validated is not a trivial property. If there exists…
The consumers' willingness to pay plays an important role in economic theory and in setting policy. For a market, this function can often be estimated from observed behavior -- preferences are revealed. However, economists would like to…
Prediction markets aggregate agents' beliefs regarding a future event, where each agent is paid based on the accuracy of its reported belief when compared to the realized outcome. Agents may strategically manipulate the market (e.g., delay…
In this paper, a new randomized response technique aimed at protecting respondents' privacy is proposed. It is designed for estimating the population total, or the population mean, of a quantitative characteristic. It provides a~high degree…
We establish an approach for consensus control of opinion dynamics by introducing a liar to the classical system. The liar's aim is to steer the population towards consensus at their goal opinion by showing 'apparent opinions', or 'lies',…
It is widely believed that computing payments needed to induce truthful bidding is somehow harder than simply computing the allocation. We show that the opposite is true: creating a randomized truthful mechanism is essentially as easy as a…
Consider a market where a seller owns an item for sale and a buyer wants to purchase it. Each player has private information, known as their type. It can be costly and difficult for the players to reach an agreement through direct…
Estimating prevalence, the fraction of a population with a certain medical condition, is fundamental to epidemiology. Traditional methods rely on classification of test samples taken at random from a population. Such approaches to…
In this paper, we study belief elicitation about an uncertain future event, where the reports will affect a principal's decision. We study two problems that can arise in this setting: (1) Agents may have an interest in the outcome of the…
We study the problem of fairly and efficiently allocating a set of items among strategic agents with additive valuations, where items are either all indivisible or all divisible. When items are goods, numerous positive and negative results…
We consider the problem of estimating confidence intervals for the mean of a random variable, where the goal is to produce the smallest possible interval for a given number of samples. While minimax optimal algorithms are known for this…
The legitimacy of bottom-up democratic processes for the distribution of public funds by policy-makers is challenging and complex. Participatory budgeting is such a process, where voting outcomes may not always be fair or inclusive.…
The goal of a scientific investigation is to find answers to specific questions. In geosciences this is typically achieved by solving an inference or inverse problem and interpreting the solution. However, the answer obtained is often…
There is a growing trend among statistical agencies to explore non-probability data sources for producing more timely and detailed statistics, while reducing costs and respondent burden. Coverage and measurement error are two issues that…