Current Research
 

  My research is primarily driven by variations of the question of how individuals relate to groups, especially in the context of decision-making. I often investigate formalized relationships between groups and individuals, such as those found in voting systems or algorithmic decision-making systems.
Currently, my research focuses on the prevention of manipulation in collective decision making mechanisms. To address this issue comprehensively, I draw upon philosophy of social science to determine what makes appropriate descriptive idealizations, particularly when constructing models with normative implications. Connected to this, I think it is wise to evaluate the descriptive accuracy of rational choice theory for a diverse range of agents (e.g., boundedly rational agents or algorithms). Moreover, an essential dimension intertwined with this topic is the normative assessment of strategic voting that connects with political philosophy, welfare economics, and epistemology.


Published Work


Completed Manuscripts

The Condorcet Jury Theorem under Ambiguity

The Condorcet Jury Theorem (CJT) serves as powerful evidence of the epistemic merits of the majority rule. The classical theorem assumes voter competence, i.e., that every voter is more likely than a coin flip to vote for the correct option. This paper reevaluates if and how we can presuppose voter competence in light of ambiguity. I argue that voter competence can fail if voters' beliefs are imprecise, even if we assume seemingly epistemically advantageous conditions such as rationality, honesty, and minimal fidelity of beliefs. The paper highlights that collective decision-making rules that perform well in situations of risk might not extend to collective decision-making under ambiguous prospects. As one solution to these results, the paper advocates including abstention as a voting option.


Strategyproofness for Equality's Sake

This paper argues that strategic voting can create power imbalances between citizens. This can be problematic insofar that we might be committed to the principle "one person one vote" on the basis that everyone should have the same opportunity to influence political decisions. Yet, equal votes and equal voting power can come apart in non-ideal settings, namely, when voters don't have the same ability to vote strategically. Thus this paper spells out a new normative foundation for strategyproofness.

Feel free to contact me for a copy!​

Work in Process

Models, Measurement and Manipulability 

 Manipulation is bad – on such much most would agree. It gets tricker, however, if we ask ourselves why manipulation is bad. The answer to this question, while interesting in itself, is also pre-requisite if we want to assess how vulnerable our institution are to manipulation. In this paper I want to explore how to measure the vulnerability of strategic voting via the voting rule. In essence, the message of the paper is quite simple: What legitimizes a particular institutional design (e.g., a voting rule) also determines the potential harm of manipulation. This potential harm, in turn, is crucial to determining which measure of manipulation is appropriate.


Heuristic Strategic Voting: Why more votes doesn’t mean more manipulation

  This is a paper based on a simulation that I wrote which models voters as boundedly rational. They vote repeatedly (such as reacting to polls) and use a simple rule to make strategic decisions instead of orthodox rational choice theory. The results suggest, contrary to the literature, that giving voters more votes will not necessarily lead to more strategic effects on the outcome. 



Paul Klee Pavillon der Zahlen, 1918 (Pavilion of Numbers)