Project Title: Social Choice Rules

Project Description:

Computer modeling of manipulability of social choice rules: The research would attempt to assess the relative ease of manipulating social choice rules by identifying the percentage of profiles on which the voter, by changing their reported preference, could obtain a more preferable outcome than if he/she reported truthfully. Related questions, such as the amount of knowledge of the other individuals' preferences to be able to successfully manipulate a social choice rule would also be addressed.

Background Information:

Work in social choice theory has shown that all methods of making social decisions are subject to manipulation - individuals can do better by falsely reporting their preferences. This work would attempt to see how serious a problem this is for various rules that are used in practice.

Literature References:

Alan Gibbard, "Manipulation of voting schemes: A general result, " Econometrica, 1973

Requirements:

The sponsor requires that interested students meet the following requirements: Experience with computers and knowledge of some computer programming language (Pascal or C).

This opportunity is for:

Caltech students only

Research Sponsor

Sponsor: Richard McKelvey and Fouad Aleskerov
Division: HSS
Mail Code: 228-77
Phone: 4091 (McKelvey)
E-mail: rdm@hss.caltech.edu (McKelvey), fda@hss.caltech.edu (Aleskerov)

For further information about the project, the student should contact: Richard McKelvey