by adminnot | Feb 7, 2011
Speaker: John McCabe Dansted
Affiliation: University of Western Australia
Title: Axioms for obligation and robustness with temporal logic
Date: Tuesday, 15 Feb 2011
Time: 4:00 pm
Location: Room 6115, Owen Glenn Building
Deontic logics are used to reason about norms. These norms may include
policies, relating to operation of an automated system, that are
subject to violation. We present a Temporal Logic of Robustness
(RoCTL*) that is intended to verify that a system is Robust to
some number of norm violations. We present sound and complete
axiomatisations of fragments of this logic and briefly discuss the
philosophical background to these axioms, including which axioms may
be relevant in fields other than robust systems. Although every
property that can be expressed in RoCTL* can be expressed in an
existing logic (CTL*), RoCTL* can express some properties much more
succinctly than CTL*.
Everyone welcome!
by crus754 | Dec 5, 2010
Speaker: Dr Yuelan Chen
Affiliation: School of Economics, The University of Queensland (http://www.uq.edu.au/~uqychen7/cv1009.pdf)
Title: Political Compensation in Two-Stage Elections (with Sven Feldmann)
Date/time: Tuesday 7th December 11am—12 Noon (All Welcome – drinks and lunch to follow the presentation)
Location: Sir Neil Waters Lecture Theatre NW100, Massey University, Albany Campus
Abstract: We study a two-stage election with two parties, each nominating a candidate in the first stage primary election to compete with the other party’s nominee in the second stage general election. This resembles the U.S. presidential election and is used in many countries in the world, but has largely escaped attention in the literature. We extend Coleman (1971) and Roemer (1997) to model such elections in the presence of uncertainty about the median voter’s position in the general election. For a given nominee by the other party, each voter in the primary chooses an optimal policy which takes into account both her ideological preference and each candidate’s winning probability in the general election. We characterize sufficient conditions under which the two parties’ equilibrium policies are their respective median voter’s optimal policy against each other. In particular, such a stable outcome is possible only if we allow candidates to freely enter or withdraw from the primary elections.
by crus754 | Oct 20, 2010
When: 12-1pm Wednesday 20 October, 2010
Where: Seminar Room, 303S.279
Speaker: Dr. Mark Wilson
Organisation: Computer Science, University of Auckland
Title: What is Computational Social Choice?
Abstract: In the last decade there has been an explosion of activity at the interface between computer science and economics. I will give a survey of some of this work, biased toward those areas about which I have substantial knowledge and/or interest, especially including voting rules.
Slides are available from my homepage www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~mcw/blog/
Biography: Mark Wilson has worked in the Department of Computer Science since 2001. He received degrees from the University of Canterbury and the University of Wisconsin-Madison, was an NZST Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Auckland, and followed this with 3 years teaching in the USA. His main research interests involve the interface between discrete mathematics, theoretical computer science, and social choice theory. He is the Acting Director of the recently established Centre for Mathematical Social Sciences.
by crus754 | Oct 20, 2010
Speaker: Steffen Lippert
Affiliation: School of Economics and Finance, Massey University at Albany
Title: “On Moral Hazard and Joint R&D” (with Simona Fabrizi)
Date: Wednesday, 20 October
Time: 4:00 pm
Location: 301-242 [Science Centre, Symonds Street]
ABSTRACT
We analyze two entrepreneurs’ choices of how much to invest in competing product innovation projects, and whether to conduct them competitively, in a cross-licensing agreement, or in an R&D joint venture. We distinguish late and early-stage projects and allow for cooperative and non-cooperative conduct in the product market ensuing an R&D joint venture. We find that early-stage projects are more likely carried out as stand-alone R&D or in cross-licensing agreements than late-stage projects; and that lenient enforcement of non-cooperative product-market conduct after R&D joint ventures should depend on the stage of the R&D project. We propose a ‘market-size – synergy defense.’
by crus754 | Sep 15, 2010
Speaker: Motty Perry
Affiliation: Hebrew University of Jerusalem and University of Warwick
Title: Dynamic Optimal Contracts with Adverse Selection and Moral Hazard
Date: Wednesday, 15 September 2010
Time: 4pm
Location: 301-242 [Science Centre, Symonds Street]
Abstract: This paper studies a novel dynamic principle – agent setting with moral hazard and adverse selection (persistent as well as repeated). In the model an expert whose skills is his private information, faces a finite sequence of tasks, one after the other. Each task’s level of difficulty is an independent random variable revealed, upon arrival, to the expert only. On each task in turn the expert choose whether to pass or to work, and how much effort to exert. While the choice of work/pass is public, his effort is his private information.
The optimal contract-pair which takes advantage of the dynamic nature of the interaction is characterized. It is shown that as the length of the contract increases, the expected transfer per-period goes down and in the limit approaches the optimal payment when agent’s skills are publicly known.
One example of such a dynamic interaction is the one occurs between a money manager who receives funds from investors, and then observes a sequence of investment opportunities. Another example that nicely fits this model is the design of optimal contracts to surgeons of different quality, to treat a flow of patients whose problems are the surgeon’s private information.
Joint work with A. Gershkov.
by adminnot | Aug 23, 2010
Speaker: Mark C. Wilson
Affiliation: University of Auckland, Computer Science
Title: The probability of safe manipulation
Date: Wednesday, 25 August 2010
Time: 4:00 pm
Location: 301.242
Manipulation by a coalition in voting games is a well-studied occurrence, yet the underlying model is rather unconvincing. Slinko and White recently introduced the more restricted concept of safe manipulation and studied some basic properties. They posed the question of the probability that safe manipulation can occur. We present some results for positional scoring rules. The numerical results for 3 candidates show that the susceptibility of such rules to safe manipulation differs substantially from that for coalitional manipulation.
Joint work with Reyhaneh Reyhani, to be presented at COMSOC 2010 in Dusseldorf.
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