Title
Parametric Prediction from Parametric Agents?
Abstract
We consider a problem of prediction based on opinions elicited from heterogeneous rational agents with private information. Making an accurate prediction with a minimal cost requires a joint design of the incentive mechanism and the prediction algorithm. To elicit heterogeneous agents’ private information and incentivize agents with different capabilities to act in the principal’s best interest, we design an optimal joint incentive mechanism and prediction algorithm called COPE (COst and Prediction Elicitation), the analysis of which offers several valuable engineering insights. First, when the costs incurred by the agents are linear in the exerted effort, COPE corresponds to a “crowd-contending” mechanism, where the principal only employs the agent with the highest capability. Second, when the costs are quadratic, COPE corresponds to a “crowdsourcing” mechanism that employs multiple agents with different capabilities at the same time. Numerical simulations show that COPE improves the principal’s profit (...
Year
DOI
Venue
2015
10.1287/opre.2017.1681
Operations Research
Keywords
Field
DocType
information system,games decisions,estimation,asymmetric network information,pricing
Mean squared prediction error,Incentive,Computer science,Crowdsourcing,A priori and a posteriori,Operations research,Exploit,Mechanism design,Prediction algorithms,Parametric statistics,Management science,Distributed computing
Journal
Volume
Issue
ISSN
66
2
0030-364X
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
2
0.37
3
Authors
4
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Yuan Luo1707.09
Nihar B. Shah2120277.17
Jianwei Huang33643260.73
Jean Walrand42709292.95