Temporal Elections: Welfare, Strategyproofness, and Proportionality

Fuente: arXiv
Enregistré dans:
Détails bibliographiques
Auteurs principaux: Elkind, Edith, Neoh, Tzeh Yuan, Teh, Nicholas
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2024
Sujets:
Accès en ligne:
Tags: Ajouter un tag
Pas de tags, Soyez le premier à ajouter un tag!
_version_ 1866929641598484480
author Elkind, Edith
Neoh, Tzeh Yuan
Teh, Nicholas
author_facet Elkind, Edith
Neoh, Tzeh Yuan
Teh, Nicholas
contents We investigate a model of sequential decision-making where a single alternative is chosen at each round. We focus on two objectives -- utilitarian welfare (Util) and egalitarian welfare (Egal) -- and consider the computational complexity of maximizing these objectives, as well as their compatibility with strategyproofness and proportionality. We observe that maximizing Util is easy, but the corresponding decision problem for Egal is NP-complete even in restricted cases. We complement this hardness result for Egal with parameterized complexity analysis and an approximation algorithm. Additionally, we show that, while a mechanism that outputs an outcome that maximizes Util is strategyproof, all deterministic mechanisms for computing outcomes that maximize Egal fail a very weak variant of strategyproofness, called non-obvious manipulability (NOM). However, we show that when agents have non-empty approval sets at each timestep, choosing an Egal-maximizing outcome while breaking ties lexicographically satisfies NOM. Regarding proportionality, we prove that a proportional (PROP) outcome can be computed efficiently, but finding an outcome that maximizes Util while guaranteeing PROP is NP-hard. We also derive upper and lower bounds on the (strong) price of proportionality with respect to Util and Egal. Some of our results extend to $p$-mean welfare measures other than Egal and Util.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2408_13637
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Temporal Elections: Welfare, Strategyproofness, and Proportionality
Elkind, Edith
Neoh, Tzeh Yuan
Teh, Nicholas
Computer Science and Game Theory
Artificial Intelligence
We investigate a model of sequential decision-making where a single alternative is chosen at each round. We focus on two objectives -- utilitarian welfare (Util) and egalitarian welfare (Egal) -- and consider the computational complexity of maximizing these objectives, as well as their compatibility with strategyproofness and proportionality. We observe that maximizing Util is easy, but the corresponding decision problem for Egal is NP-complete even in restricted cases. We complement this hardness result for Egal with parameterized complexity analysis and an approximation algorithm. Additionally, we show that, while a mechanism that outputs an outcome that maximizes Util is strategyproof, all deterministic mechanisms for computing outcomes that maximize Egal fail a very weak variant of strategyproofness, called non-obvious manipulability (NOM). However, we show that when agents have non-empty approval sets at each timestep, choosing an Egal-maximizing outcome while breaking ties lexicographically satisfies NOM. Regarding proportionality, we prove that a proportional (PROP) outcome can be computed efficiently, but finding an outcome that maximizes Util while guaranteeing PROP is NP-hard. We also derive upper and lower bounds on the (strong) price of proportionality with respect to Util and Egal. Some of our results extend to $p$-mean welfare measures other than Egal and Util.
title Temporal Elections: Welfare, Strategyproofness, and Proportionality
topic Computer Science and Game Theory
Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2408.13637