Fair Allocation through Selective Information Acquisition
Fair Allocation through Selective Information Acquisition
复制标题
通过选择性信息获取实现公平分配
DOI：
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复制
发表时间：
2019
期刊：
影响因子：
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通讯作者：
Sharad Goel
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
William Cai;Johann D. Gaebler;Nikhil Garg;Sharad Goel
公共和私人机构往往必须在不确定的情况下分配稀缺资源。例如，银行在一定程度上根据贷款申请人偿还贷款的估计可能性向他们发放信贷。但是，当候选人的信息质量不同时（例如，如果一些申请人缺乏传统的信用记录），共同的贷款策略可能导致群体之间的差异。在这里，我们考虑这样一种情况：在分配资源之前，决策者可以选择将有限的预算中的一部分用于进一步筛选选定的个人。我们提出了一种计算效率高的算法来决定筛选谁，从而使社会福利的标准度量最大化。直觉上，决策者应该在差额范围内筛选候选人，因为额外的信息可能会合理地改变分配。我们通过证明这个问题可以简化为求解一系列线性规划来形式化这个想法。无论是在合成数据集还是真实数据集上，该策略都提高了实用性，说明了在此类决策中目标信息获取的价值。此外，当将资源分配给我们先验信息贫乏的群体（比如那些没有信用评分的群体）具有社会价值时，我们的方法可以大大改善有限资产的分配。
Public and private institutions must often allocate scarce resources under uncertainty. Banks, for example, extend credit to loan applicants based in part on their estimated likelihood of repaying a loan. But when the quality of information differs across candidates (e.g., if some applicants lack traditional credit histories), common lending strategies can lead to disparities across groups. Here we consider a setting in which decision makers---before allocating resources---can choose to spend some of their limited budget further screening select individuals. We present a computationally efficient algorithm for deciding whom to screen that maximizes a standard measure of social welfare. Intuitively, decision makers should screen candidates on the margin, for whom the additional information could plausibly alter the allocation. We formalize this idea by showing the problem can be reduced to solving a series of linear programs. Both on synthetic and real-world datasets, this strategy improves utility, illustrating the value of targeted information acquisition in such decisions. Further, when there is social value for distributing resources to groups for whom we have a priori poor information---like those without credit scores---our approach can substantially improve the allocation of limited assets.
DOI：
10.1073/pnas.1720347115
发表时间：
2018-04-17
影响因子：
11.1
作者：
Garg, Nikhil;Schiebinger, Londa;Zou, James
通讯作者：
Zou, James