Maya Bar-Hillel (Hebrew University)
Monday, June 7th, 4:30pm (Israel time). Online only.
Gil Kalai (Hebrew University)
Tuesday, June 8th, 4pm (Israel time). At the Technion (Cooper 216) and online.
Title: Quantitative and qualitative aspects of social choice theory
Abstract: Arrow’s theorem is a far reaching extension of Condorcet’s paradox for the majority rule to general voting rules. We will ask to what extent other properties of the majority rule have such wide extensions, and what are some properties of the majority rule that distinguish it from other voting rules.
Gabrielle Demange (Paris School of Economics)
Thursday, June 10th, 4pm (Israel time). Online only.
Title: On proportionality in non-simple problems
Abstract: Proportionality is an old and intuitive principle, easy to define in uni-dimensional problems but much less so in many practical situations. What is a proportional representation of parties in a multi-district assembly? What is a proportional resolution among a network of financially linked firms? How to measure the deviation to a proportional allocation of minorities to schools? There is not a single answer to these questions, as each problem faces different constraints. In this talk, I will discuss solutions based on the same methodology, the optimization of an entropy index. In ‘bi-dimensional’ problems, the solutions are related to well-studied bi-proportional matrices and their computation through matrix-scaling algorithms.