Quadratic Funding with Incomplete Information
Luis V. M. Freitas (Global Priorities Institute,
University of Oxford) and Wilfredo L. Maldonado
(University of Sao Paulo)
GPI Working Paper No. 10 - 2022, published in Social Choice and Welfare
Quadratic funding is a public good provision mechanism that satisfies desirable theoretical properties, such as efficiency under complete information, and has been gaining popularity in practical applications. We evaluate this mechanism in a setting of incomplete information regarding individual preferences, and show that this result only holds under knife-edge conditions. We also estimate the inefficiency of the mechanism in a variety of settings and show, in particular, that inefficiency increases in population size and in the variance of expected contribution to the public good. We show how these findings can be used to estimate the mechanism’s inefficiency in a wide range of situations under incomplete information.
Other working papers
A paradox for tiny probabilities and enormous values – Nick Beckstead (Open Philanthropy Project) and Teruji Thomas (Global Priorities Institute, Oxford University)
We show that every theory of the value of uncertain prospects must have one of three unpalatable properties. Reckless theories recommend risking arbitrarily great gains at arbitrarily long odds for the sake of enormous potential; timid theories recommend passing up arbitrarily great gains to prevent a tiny increase in risk; nontransitive theories deny the principle that, if A is better than B and B is better than C, then A must be better than C.
Moral uncertainty and public justification – Jacob Barrett (Global Priorities Institute, University of Oxford) and Andreas T Schmidt (University of Groningen)
Moral uncertainty and disagreement pervade our lives. Yet we still need to make decisions and act, both in individual and political contexts. So, what should we do? The moral uncertainty approach provides a theory of what individuals morally ought to do when they are uncertain about morality…
Estimating long-term treatment effects without long-term outcome data – David Rhys Bernard (Paris School of Economics)
Estimating long-term impacts of actions is important in many areas but the key difficulty is that long-term outcomes are only observed with a long delay. One alternative approach is to measure the effect on an intermediate outcome or a statistical surrogate and then use this to estimate the long-term effect. …