2nd Semester 2010/11: Uncertainty and Decisions: From Individual to Group Choice

Instructors

Stéphane Airiau and Umberto Grandi
If you are interested in this project, please contact Stéphane by email.

"The rational choice paradigm provides a way of thinking about the world, but it does not provide answers to a multitude of concrete questions. [...] Problems that range from the definition of probability to the meaning of happiness, from the notion of rationality to the essence of justice, belong to the realm of philosophy, but they pop up in practical guises in questions of the social sciences. [...] I believe the rational choice paradigm can be a powerful aid in thinking about such problems." -- Itzhak Gilboa

ECTS

6

Description

The aim of this project is to gain a solid comprehension of the standard theory of decision under uncertainty and of the main theorems of group decision making with complete information, and to explore their generalisations in uncertain domains.

Topics: Topics of lectures will include

• Background (environment without uncertainty)
  • Individual choice and preference, representation of utility
  • Group choices: Nash, Arrow and Arrow-Debreu theorem
• Decision making under uncertainty
  • Objective uncertainty: vNM utility functions
  • Subjective uncertainty: Savage's theorem
  • Condorcet Jury Theorem
  • Overview of group choices under uncertainty (which will be the topic for final papers)

Organisation

The first half of the project will consist of lectures. In the last part, each student will give a presentation about an existing paper in the literature on group choice under uncertainty and will write a final paper on that topic.