The Institute for Statistics and Mathematics is pleased to invite you to the next research seminar, taking place on campus:

Jakša Cvitanić (Division of the Humanities and Social Sciences, Caltech California Institute of Technology, USA)
Truth-Incentive Surveys
Wednesday, November 29, 2023, 17:00, online talk

Abstract:

In this talk, I will present some results on the problem of eliciting honest responses to a multiple choice question (MCQ) in a survey of a sample of respondents, as might appear in a market research study, opinion poll or economics experiment. Since the original "Bayesian Truth Serum" (BTS) of Prelec (2004), many other truth-incentive mechanisms have been found. We introduce a new one, which is particularly simple. Under our, so-called choice-matching mechanism, respondents are compensated through an auxiliary task, e.g., a personal consumption choice or a forecast. Their compensation depends both on their performance on the auxiliary task, and on the performance of those respondents who matched their response to the MCQ. I will also discuss conditions under which BTS is the unique mechanism that correctly ranks experts.

The talk is based on joint papers with D. Prelec, S. Radas, B. Riley, H. Sikic and B. Tereick.

We aim to stream all on-campus talks via Zoom. A direct link to the stream will be posted on our website.

For further information and the seminar schedule, please see:
www.wu.ac.at/en/statmath/research/resseminar