"Quadratically Normalized Utilitarian Voting"
co-authored with Marcus Pivato, Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne

Abstract : We propose a new voting mechanism in which voters simultaneously report their von Neumann-Morgenstern (vNM) utility functions across multiple decision problems, each of which has a finite number of alternatives. Each voter must report a real-valued “valuation” for each alternative of each decision. Each voter’s valuation vector is rescaled to have unit magnitude (where this magnitude is measured using a specially constructed quadratic form). We show that it is a dominant strategy for each voter to reveal her true vNM utility function. With very high probability, the mechanism selects the alternative that maximizes a weighted utilitarian social welfare function. The mechanism does not use money, and does not assume quasilinear utilities.