Adam Smith Business School

Professor Carmine Ventre, King's College

"Mechanism Design for Imperfect Rationality"
Tuesday, 5 December. 4 pm
Room 141 Adam Smith Business School Building

Abstract

Catering to the incentives of people with imperfect rationality requires novel paradigms to design mechanisms and approximation algorithms. In this seminar, we will talk about two notions, Obviously strategyproofness (OSP) and Non-Obviously Manipulability (NOM), that have recently emerged as concepts of interest to this research agenda. OSP is a strengthening of strategyproofness wherein imperfect rationality may lead to unprofitable deviations from honest behaviour. We will discuss this concept, with a particular emphasis on its algorithmic nature. NOM mechanisms, instead, are built on the more optimistic viewpoint that misbehavior is limited to those deviations that are "easy" to understand. We will discuss how these mechanisms can leverage imperfect decision making to guarantee incentive compatibility.

Bio

Carmine Ventre is a Professor of Computer Science and Chair in Computational Finance in the Department of Informatics, King's College London. After gaining an MSc in Computer Science, Professor Carmine Ventre was awarded his PhD, defending a thesis on theoretical advances in the design of incentive-compatible mechanisms. He subsequently worked at the University of Liverpool as a post-doctoral researcher. Subsequently, he has held academic positions at Teesside University and the University of Essex. Carmine joined King's in September 2019, to lead the Finance research hub in the Department of Informatics. Since July 2023, he is also the director of the King's Institute for AI. Professor Ventre’s research interests include algorithmic game theory, microeconomics and the internet, AI for algorithmic trading and finance and cryptography and security.

---

For further information, please contact business-school-research@glasgow.ac.uk

We foster a positive and productive environment for seminars through our Code of conduct.

First published: 30 October 2023