Zoë hitzig is a junior fellow at the
harvard society of fellows (on leave). She received her phd in economics from
harvard in 2023. Her work aims to formalize social tradeoffs in the design of
economic and computational systems.
Website: https://www.zoehitzig.com/
Paper: https://scholar.harvard.edu/sites/scholar.harvard.edu/files/hitzig/files/haupt_hitzig_cp_oct23.pdf
Slides: https://scholar.harvard.edu/sites/scholar.harvard.edu/files/hitzig/files/cp_bu_slides.pdf
Abstract: Consider a mechanism designer who
employs a dynamic protocol to implement a choice rule. A protocol violates the
contextual privacy of an agent if the designer learns more of the agent’s private information than is necessary for computing the outcome.
Our first main result is a characterization of choice rules that can be
implemented without producing any contextual privacy violations. We apply this
result to show that many commonly studied and employed choice rules violate
some agent’s contextual privacy—the first-price auction and serial dictatorship rules are notable
exceptions that can avoid violations altogether. Our second main result is a
representation theorem for protocols that are contextual privacy equivalent. We
use this result to derive a novel protocol for the second-price auction choice
rule, the ascending-join protocol, which is more contextually private than the
widespread ascending or “English” protocol.
If you would like to give a presentation
in a future webinar, contact our Senior Economist Dr. Wen Chen (wen.chen@luohanacademy.com). For
other inquiries, please contact: events@luohanacademy.com.
