Prem S. Puri Memorial Lecture

Quadratic Voting

Dr. Steven P. Lalley
Professor of Statistics and Mathematics
University of Chicago

Start Date and Time: Thu, 25 Apr 2019, 10:30 AM

End Date and Time: Thu, 25 Apr 2019, 11:30 AM

Venue: SC 239

Refreshments: 10:00 a.m. in HAAS 111

Abstract:

A group of N individuals must choose between two collective alternatives. Under Quadratic Voting, agents buy votes in favor of their preferred alternative from a clearing house, paying the square of the number of votes purchased, and the sum of all votes purchased determines the outcome.

Each agent is assumed to have a private value that determines his/her utility; these values are assigned by simple random sampling from a probability distribution F with a smooth density on a compact interval.

Under these assumptions, the structure of the Bayes-Nash equilibrium is described when N is large. The results imply that the quadratic voting mechanism is asymptotically efficient.