Related papers: Empirical Welfare Maximization with Constraints
This paper develops a novel method for policy choice in a dynamic setting where the available data is a multivariate time series. Overcoming challenges unique to time-series setting such as time-varying environments, history-dependent…
Threshold policies are decision rules that assign treatments based on whether an observable characteristic exceeds a certain threshold. They are widespread across multiple domains, including welfare programs, taxation, and clinical…
The goal of policy learning is to train a policy function that recommends a treatment given covariates to maximize population welfare. There are two major approaches in policy learning: the empirical welfare maximization (EWM) approach and…
This paper proposes an optimal policy that targets the average welfare of the worst-off $\alpha$-fraction of the post-treatment outcome distribution. We refer to this policy as the $\alpha$-Expected Welfare Maximization ($\alpha$-EWM) rule,…
Welfare economics relies on access to agents' utility functions: we revisit classical questions in welfare economics, assuming access to data on agents' past choices instead of their utilities. Our main result considers the existence of…
Empirical divergence maximization (EDM) refers to a recently proposed strategy for estimating f-divergences and likelihood ratio functions. This paper extends the idea to empirical vector quantization where one seeks to empirically derive…
This paper studies a penalized statistical decision rule for the treatment assignment problem. Consider the setting of a utilitarian policy maker who must use sample data to allocate a binary treatment to members of a population, based on…
We consider the robust exponential utility maximization problem in discrete time: An investor maximizes the worst case expected exponential utility with respect to a family of nondominated probabilistic models of her endowment by…
Motivated by applications such as college admission and insurance rate determination, we propose an evaluation problem where the inputs are controlled by strategic individuals who can modify their features at a cost. A learner can only…
We consider the problem of repeatedly choosing policies to maximize social welfare. Welfare is a weighted sum of private utility and public revenue. Earlier outcomes inform later policies. Utility is not observed, but indirectly inferred.…
Participatory budgeting (PB) is a voting paradigm for distributing a divisible resource, usually called a budget, among a set of projects by aggregating the preferences of individuals over these projects. It is implemented quite extensively…
We consider the classic problem of fairly allocating indivisible goods among agents with additive valuation functions and explore the connection between two prominent fairness notions: maximum Nash welfare (MNW) and envy-freeness up to any…
This paper studies identification and inference of the welfare gain that results from switching from one policy (such as the status quo policy) to another policy. The welfare gain is not point identified in general when data are obtained…
I propose a framework for learning individualized policy rules in observational data settings characterized by endogenous treatment selection and the availability of an instrumental variable. I introduce encouragement rules that manipulate…
Consider a causal structure with endogeneity (i.e., unobserved confoundedness) in empirical data, where an instrumental variable is available. In this setting, we show that the mean social welfare function can be identified and represented…
Fair allocation of indivisible goods studies allocating $m$ goods among $n$ agents in a fair manner. While fairness is a fundamental requirement in many real-world applications, it often conflicts with (economic) efficiency. This raises a…
We study the power of item-pricing as a tool for approximately optimizing social welfare in a combinatorial market. We consider markets with $m$ indivisible items and $n$ buyers. The goal is to set prices to the items so that, when agents…
Multilateral index numbers are often used to make claims about welfare, such as treating PPPs as cross-country costs of living or real incomes as indicators of living standards. However, such interpretations may not be consistent with the…
We present our findings in the gap between theory and practice of using conditional energy-based models (EBM) as an implicit representation for behavior-cloned policies. We also clarify several subtle, and potentially confusing, details in…
We address the issue of equitable energy access within an energy community consisting of members with diverse socioeconomic backgrounds, including varying income levels and differing capacities to access distributed energy resources such as…