Seminar

In this session, we will have two speakers. Shivika Narang will give an overview talk about ballot formats and on the distortion of voting rules, followed by a spotlight talk given by Gerdus Benadè (Boston University):

"Preference Elicitation for Participatory Budgeting:" Participatory budgeting enables the allocation of public funds by collecting and aggregating individual preferences; it has already had a sizable real-world impact. But making the most of this new paradigm requires a rethinking of some of the basics of computational social choice, including the very way in which individuals express their preferences. We attempt to maximize social welfare by using the observed votes as proxies for voters' unknown underlying utilities, and analytically compare four preference elicitation methods: knapsack votes, rankings by value or value for money, and threshold approval votes. We find that threshold approval voting is qualitatively superior, and also performs well in experiments using data from real participatory budgeting elections.