by Mark C. Wilson | Jan 31, 2012
Organization/Institution: NICTA (National ICT Australia)
Researchers (Optimisation)
At least 2 positions available for researchers on the interface of optimization, social choice
and machine learning.
Competitive Salary: 85K-110K Australian, incl. superannuation.
Duration: Up to 3 years in the first instance.
Research project: Optimisation, Preferences and Mechanism Design in Social Networks.
NICTA (National ICT Australia) is Australia’s Information and
Communications Technology (ICT) Research Centre of Excellence. Our
primary goal is to conduct world-class research generating fundamental
scientific results with an impact on society. NICTA aspires to be one
of the world’s top ten ICT research centres by 2020.
Applications are invited for researcher positions within the
Optimisation Research Group, to work with Toby Walsh and other
members of the group in Sydney.
We seek outstanding researchers who have recently received their PhD
to be part of a large, world-class optimisation group. The researchers
will join a new research project on the interface of the optimisation,
machine learning, and social networks. Social networks
are transforming the way that people and businesses interact.
However, they throw up many challenging new optimisation problems.
How do we best combine the preferences of multiple users? How do
best learn these preferences? How do we design mechanisms that use
these preferences which encourage truthful behaviour yet generate
outcomes which are (close to) optimal? Can we exploit the structure
of the social network?
Candidates should have a PhD in computer science, computational aspects
of economics, operations research, or related areas, with
a strong background in artificial intelligence, social choice,
operations research, machine learning or mechanism design. Candidates
should have a strong theoretical background, as well as programming
skills and experience in using optimisation technologies.
It is expected that all researchers will continue to build upon their
international reputation by publishing papers and attending top
conferences, while participating in projects at NICTA.
Application Instructions
The full text of the advertising will appear shortly.
Application Instructions
Please email resume, motivation letter, short research statement, and names of 3 referees to:
Toby Walsh (toby.walsh@nicta.com.au)
by Mark C. Wilson | Nov 8, 2011
Speaker: Simon Grant
Affiliation: The University of Queensland
Title: A matter of interpretation: Ambiguous contracts and liquidated damages
Date: Tuesday, 22 Nov 2011
Time: 4:00 pm
Location: Room 6115, Owen Glenn Building
We focus on syntactic aspects of differential awareness that give rise to contractual disputes. Boundedly rational parties use a common language, but do not share a common understanding of the world, leading to ambiguity in both syntactic and semantic forms. In contractual relationships, ambiguity leads to disagreement and disputes. We show that the agents may prefer simpler less ambiguous contracts when facing potential disputes. In particular, parties may prefer liquidated damages provisions to contractual terms that specify a more complex risk allocation.
Everyone welcome!
by Mark C. Wilson | Oct 24, 2011
CALL FOR PAPERS, WORKSHOPS, AND TUTORIALS
Thirteenth ACM Conference on Electronic Commerce (EC’12)
June 4-8, 2012, Valencia, Spain
http://www.sigecom.org/ec12/
This conference includes areas of interest to CMSS members, such as Computational Social Choice, Preferences and Decision Theory. Invited speakers for the 3rd CMSS summer workshop, Edith Elkind and Jerome Lang, are senior programme committee members.
by Mark C. Wilson | Oct 24, 2011
The Centre for Mathematical Social Science at The University of Auckland (New Zealand) is organizing a workshop on the theme “Algorithmic. Logical and Game-theoretic aspects of Social Choice” for 20-21 February 2012. The organizing committee is: Arkadii Slinko, Mark Wilson, Matthew Ryan. Invited speakers:
- Edith Elkind (Nanyang Tech, Singapore)
- Piotr Faliszewski (AGH Krakow, Poland)
- Jerome Lang (University of Paris 9, France)
- Toby Walsh (University of NSW and NICTA, Australia)
by Mark C. Wilson | Aug 24, 2011
Speaker: Matthew Ryan
Affiliation: The University of Auckland
Title: Inference with Ambiguous Priors and an Economic Application
Date: Tuesday, 13 Sep 2011
Time: 4:00 pm
Location: Room 6115, Owen Glenn Building
This paper considers statistical inference when the prior takes the form of a belief function (Dempster, 1967; Shafer, 1976) rather than a probability. We review some approaches to this non-standard inference problem and discuss their properties. The paper also develops an economic application, in which entrepreneurs learn about a new market or technology over time. We demonstrate that these learning dynamics, when embedded in an equilibrium model of price determination, can produce an “investment bubble”: a boom in investment despite unfavourable market data – a frequentist evaluation would lead one to reject the new technology – followed by the inevitable crash. The investment boom and bust in tech stocks of the late 1990’s is a recent example of the phenomenon. Curiously, the initial boom is driven not by the increasing exuberance of over-optimistic entrepreneurs, but by the diminishing resistance of their more conservative employees and financiers. This is a Joint work with Luca Rigotti (Pittsburgh) and Rhema Vaithianathan.
Everyone welcome!
by Mark C. Wilson | Aug 16, 2011
Speaker: Arkadii Slinko, Geoffrey Pritchard and Mark Wilson
Affiliation: The University of Auckland
Title: CMSS seminar devoted to referendum on electoral system in NZ
Date: Tuesday, 23 Aug 2011
Time: 4:00 pm
Location: Room 6115, Owen Glenn Building
On 26 November 2011 New Zealanders will vote in a referendum asking whether they want to retain the MMP electoral system, and if that system were to be changed, which of four other systems they would prefer. In this seminar we will have two talks in relation to this and general discussion.
[Note: slides for Pritchard-Wilson talk are available.]
1) Choosing how to choose an electoral system – 20 min
Arkadii Slinko
In this short talk I will introduce the options, i.e., the rules we are to choose from, list their obvious drawbacks and outline general principles on the basis of which, I believe, the choice should be made.
2) Referendum options simulator project – 40 min
Geoffrey Pritchard and Mark Wilson
The Electoral Commission has provided qualitative information about each of the five systems. We have created an online simulator that aims to allow a more quantitative comparison by estimating the seat distribution in Parliament under each of the systems, for each user-specified polling scenario.
We use NZ-specific data rather than general results for artificial societies. This immediately raises important modelling questions and particular issues around lack of data and spatial distribution of party support. Other obstacles include the specification in the referendum legislation that 120 electorates be used for each system, requiring us to perform redistricting. In this talk we shall present the simulator and discuss its internal workings and some representative results. Audience questions and comments are strongly invited.
3) General discussion – 30 min
Everyone welcome!
by Mark C. Wilson | Jul 27, 2011
New Zealanders will vote in a referendum in November asking whether they want to change the current voting system used for deciding the makeup of Parliament.
Dr Geoffrey Pritchard and Dr Mark C. Wilson, members of the Centre for Mathematical Social Science at the University of Auckland, have created a simulator intended to voters to compare the 5 proposed electoral systems in a quantitative way, by allowing them to compute quickly, for a given polling scenario, the party seat distribution in Parliament under each system. It is written in Javascript and the source code is publicly available.
The authors intend to refine the model used in future depending on resources, and welcome constructive feedback. The simulator is a research tool that they hope will have some use for members of the public.
The simulator can be accessed here.
by Mark C. Wilson | Jul 6, 2011
TITLE: A Stochastic Elasticity Correction to the Black-Scholes Formula
SPEAKER: Professor Jeong-Hoon Kim (Yonsei University, Korea)
TIME/DATE: 4pm, Monday, 11 July
VENUE: Room 6115 (OGGB)
About the Speaker
Professor Kim is specialist in the mathematics of asset pricing, and is based in the Financial Mathematics Lab at Yonsei University. He is presently on sabbatical in Australasia, and will be visiting the CMSS until 17 July. He is in room 6101 of the OGGB if you would like to drop by and say hello. Professor Kim’s talk will discuss a generalisation of the Black-Scholes formula which introduces a type of stochastic volatility. A more detailed abstract appears below. Professor Kim has promised to emphasise the financial/economic logic behind the ideas, so the talk will be accessible to the less mathematically inclined!
******************************************************
Abstract:
We propose a CEV-type model where the elasticity takes a perturbative form in terms of a small and fast mean-reverting process. Based on this multiscale hybrid structure of the volatility of the underlying asset price, we study option pricing in such a way that the resultant option price has a desirable correction to the Black-Scholes formula. The correction effects are developed by asymptotic analysis based upon the Ornstein-Uhlenbeck diffusion that decorrelates rapidly while fluctuating on a fast time-scale. Our results show that the implied volatilities demonstrate a smile effect (right geometry), which overcomes the major drawback of the Black-Scholes model, and move to the right direction as the underlying asset price increases (right dynamics), which fits observed market behavior and removes the possible instability of hedging that local volatility models might cope with. We also show correction effects on the fitting of the implied volatility surface to the market data as well as on the reduction of the hedging cost.
by Mark C. Wilson | Jul 3, 2011
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CALL FOR PARTICIPATION
3rd Summer Workshop, The Centre for Mathematical Social Science (CMSS) at The University of Auckland, 20-21 February, 2012
==================================================
The Centre for Mathematical Social Science (CMSS) at The University of
Auckland (New Zealand) is planning to organize its 3rd Summer
Workshop, which will take place 20-21 February 2012 in Auckland. The umbrella title for the workshop is: “Algorithmic and game-theoretic aspects of social choice”. The confirmed speakers from overseas at this date are:
– Jerome Lang (Université Paris Dauphine)
– Toby Walsh (University of NSW and NICTA)
– Piotr Faliszewski (AGH Institute of Technology, Krakow)
– Edith Elkind (NTU, Singapore)
The formal presentations will be accompanied by research collaborations in small groups with participation from visitors and local researchers, including PhD
students. The proposed topics for these small group sessions are to be
discussed but will certainly include voting procedures and voting equilibria, manipulation of voting procedures, simple games and power indices.
The Centre is planning to provide financial support to seminar presenters but the exact amount of it will be known later, as it depends on the outcome of several grant applications. New participants are welcome. If you wish to participate please contact
Arkadii Slinko
Department of Mathematics
The University of Auckland,
Centre for Mathematics in Social Sciences
Seminar & Events Organizer
a.slinko@auckland.ac.nz
by Mark C. Wilson | Jun 24, 2011
The programme co-chair Edith Elkind is a CMSS external affiliate and frequent visitor.
————-
WINE 2011, the 7th Workshop on Internet & Network Economics.
December 11-14, 2011, Singapore.
Over the past decade, there has been a growing interaction between
researchers in theoretical computer science, networking and security,
economics, mathematics, sociology, and management sciences devoted to
the analysis of problems arising from the Internet and the World Wide
Web. The Workshop on Internet & Network Economics (WINE) is an
interdisciplinary forum for the exchange of ideas and results arising
from these various fields. The seventh WINE will take place in
December, 2011 in Singapore.
All submissions will be peer-reviewed and evaluated on the basis of
the quality of their contribution, originality, soundness, and
significance. Industrial applications and position papers presenting
novel ideas, issues, challenges and directions are also welcome.
Submissions are invited in the following topics but not limited to:
* Algorithmic game theory
* Algorithmic mechanism design
* Auction algorithms and analysis
* Computational advertising
* Computational aspects of equilibria
* Computational social choice
* Convergence and learning in games
* Coalitions, coordination and collective action
* Economics aspects of security and privacy
* Economics aspects of distributed and network computing
* Information and attention economics
* Network games
* Price differentiation and price dynamics
* Social networks.
Submission Format
Authors are invited to submit extended abstracts presenting original
research on any of the research fields related to WINE’11. No
simultaneous submission to other publication outlets (either a
conference or a journal) is allowed.
An extended abstract submitted to WINE’11 should start with the title
of the paper, each author’s name, affiliation and e-mail address,
followed by a one-paragraph summary of the results to be presented.
This should then be followed by a technical exposition of the main
ideas and techniques used to achieve these results, including
motivation and a clear comparison with related work. The extended
abstract should not exceed 12 single-spaced pages (full papers) or 6
pages (short papers) using reasonable margins and at least 10-point
font (excluding references and title page). If the authors believe
that more details are essential to substantiate the claims of the
paper, they may include a clearly marked appendix (with no space
limit) that will be read at the discretion of the Program Committee.
It is strongly recommended that submissions adhere to the specified
format and length. Submissions that are clearly too long may be
rejected immediately. The proceedings of the conference will be
published by Springer-Verlag in the Lecture Notes in Computer Science
series, and will be available for distribution at the conference.
Submissions are strongly encouraged, though not required, to follow
the LNCS format.
Submission of Working Papers
To accommodate the publishing traditions of different fields, we allow
the authors to submit working papers that they intend to publish in
journals that do not accept papers previously published in conference
proceedings. These submissions will be reviewed together with the
regular submission using the same acceptance criteria, but only a
one-page abstract will appear in the proceedings with a URL that
points to the full paper and that will be reliable for at least two
years. Open access is preferred although the paper can be hosted by a
publisher who takes copyright and limits access, as long as there is a
link to the location. At the submission stage, such papers should be
formatted in the same way as the regular submissions (in particular,
they can be submitted as long or short papers), but the title page
should state clearly that the submission is a working paper.
Important Dates
* Submission deadline (regular papers): July 31, 2011.
* Submission deadline (short papers): August 7, 2011.
* Notification: September 15, 2011.
* Camera-ready copy is due on September 28, 2011.
For more information and submission instructions, see the conference homepage:
http://web.spms.ntu.edu.sg/~wine11/
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