Conferences at Department of Economics, University of Toronto, Canadian Economic Theory Conference 2025

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Eliciting Informed Preferences

Modibo Khane Camara*, Nicole Immorlica, Brendan Lucier

Building: HEC Montréal - Édifice Hélène-Desmarais
Room: HEC
Date: 2025-05-02 2:00 pm – 2:30 pm
Last modified: 2025-04-19

Abstract


If people find it costly to evaluate the options available to them, their choices may not directly reveal their preferences. Yet, it is conceivable that a researcher can still learn about a population's preferences with careful experiment design. We formalize the researcher's problem in a model of robust mechanism design where it is costly for individuals to learn about how much they value a product. We characterize the statistics that the researcher can identify, and find that they are quite restricted. Finally, we apply our positive results to social choice and propose a way to combat uninformed voting.

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