Quadratic Voting and the Public Good
April
7-8
2016

Event Recap
Quadratic Voting (QV) aims to bring the efficiency of markets to collective decision making by pricing rather than rationing votes. The proposal has attracted substantial interest and controversy in economics, law, philosophy and beyond. The goal of this conference was to evaluate the promise of Quadratic Voting and to stimulate research on QV from a broad range of perspectives. Leading scholars from disciplines ranging from classics to cryptography presented their work on diverse issues related to QV, including the history of the ideas behind it, practical implementation for market research surveys, objections to the use of money in politics and how QV might have averted political disasters in history. The conference papers will be published in a special issue of Public Choice in 2017, following up on a parallel special issue forty years prior on the use of the Vickrey-Clarke-Groves mechanism for collective decisions.
Agenda
Thursday, April 7, 2016
Opening Remarks: Efficient Collective Decision-Making, Marginal Cost Pricing, and Quadratic Voting
Nicolaus Tideman, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
Roger Myerson, David L. Pearson Distinguished Service Professor of Global Conflict Studies, Harris Public Policy
Quadratic Voting as an Application of the Normalized Gradient Addition Mechanism
Video
Daniel J. Benjamin, University of Southern California
Miles Kimball, University of Michigan
Derek Lougee, Cornell University
Roger Myerson, David L. Pearson Distinguished Service Professor of Global Conflict Studies, Harris Public Policy
The Robustness of Quadratic Voting
Video
E. Glen Weyl, Principal Researcher, Microsoft Research New England
Roger Myerson, David L. Pearson Distinguished Service Professor of Global Conflict Studies, Harris Public Policy
Cardinal Preferences, Representation, and Polarization
Video
John Patty, University of Chicago
Elizabeth Maggie Penn
Roger Myerson, David L. Pearson Distinguished Service Professor of Global Conflict Studies, Harris Public Policy
Ethical Considerations on Quadratic Voting
Video
Ben Laurence, University of Chicago
Itai Sher, University of California, San Diego
Alain Bresson, University of Chicago
Interests/Preferences, Equality/Efficiency: Historical Notes on QV
Josiah Ober, Stanford University
Alain Bresson, University of Chicago
The Rise and Fragmentation of Collective Decision in American Economics, 1940-1990
Beatrice Cherrier, University of Caen
Jean-Baptiste Fleury, University of Cergy-Pontoise
Alain Bresson, University of Chicago
Friday, April 8, 2016
Quadratic Election Law
Video
Eric Posner, Kirkland & Ellis Distinguished Service Professor of Law, Arthur and Esther Kane Research Chair, The Law School
Nicholas Stephanopoulos, University of Chicago
David A. Weisbach, Walter J. Blum Professor of Law, Senior Fellow, the Computation Institute of the University of Chicago and Argonne National Laboratory, Law School
Voter Turnout and Quadratic Voting
Louis Kaplow, Harvard Law School
David A. Weisbach, Walter J. Blum Professor of Law, Senior Fellow, the Computation Institute of the University of Chicago and Argonne National Laboratory, Law School
Quadratic Patent Policy
Jonathan Masur, University of Chicago Law School
David A. Weisbach, Walter J. Blum Professor of Law, Senior Fellow, the Computation Institute of the University of Chicago and Argonne National Laboratory, Law School
One Man, One Bid
Video
JingJing Zhang, University of Technology Sydney
James Evans, Professor, Sociology; Director, Knowledge Lab; Faculty Director, Computational Social Science Program, University of Chicago
Towards Secure Quadratic Voting
Video
Sunoo Park, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
James Evans, Professor, Sociology; Director, Knowledge Lab; Faculty Director, Computational Social Science Program, University of Chicago
Quadratic Voting in the Wild: Real People, Real Votes
Doug von Kohorn, Yale University
David Quarfoot, Collective Decision Engines
James Evans, Professor, Sociology; Director, Knowledge Lab; Faculty Director, Computational Social Science Program, University of Chicago