Tootfinder

Taxpayer cash, zero accountability: Minnesota fraud proves welfare is broken (Rachel Sheffield/Fox News)
https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/taxpayer-cash-zero-accountability-minnesota-fraud-proves-welfare-broken
http://www.memeorandum.com/251217/p44#a251217p44

"In truth, no Number fully insulates anyone from life’s vicissitudes. Markets crash, health fails, taxes rise, wars and pestilence break out...."
So, pay your taxes and invest in a welfare safety net, is the unspoken part.
The absurdity of bankers’ retirement fund targets - https://on.ft.com/4o2NNbV

The Economics of Information Pollution in the Age of AI: A General Equilibrium Approach to Welfare, Measurement, and Policy
Yukun Zhang, Tianyang Zhang
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.13729

The Economics of Information Pollution in the Age of AI: A General Equilibrium Approach to Welfare, Measurement, and Policy
The advent of Large Language Models (LLMs) represents a fundamental shock to the economics of information production. By asymmetrically collapsing the marginal cost of generating low-quality, synthetic content while leaving high-quality production costly, AI systematically incentivizes information pollution. This paper develops a general equilibrium framework to analyze this challenge. We model the strategic interactions among a monopolistic platform, profit-maximizing producers, and utility-ma…

When people can’t tell what’s real, it can blur their understanding of animal behavior, welfare, and conservation needs. It can also divert attention – and support – away from organizations doing the real work to protect wildlife.
https://scz.org/blog/the-reality-of-ai-animal-content

Republican leaders used money allocated for the health & safety of Florida's children... for election advertisements instead.
Taking money from children.
Let that immorality sink in.
#florida #Republicans

The Intellectualist (@the_intellectualist_official) on Threads
Investigation: Florida routed $35M+ through agencies to election-season ads opposing abortion and marijuana measures, tapping child-protection, public-health and opioid funds as records left totals unclear. https://theintellectualistofficial.substack.com/p/florida-agencies-used-child-welfare

Towards Long-Term User Welfare in Recommender Systems via Creator-Oriented Information Revelation
Xu Zhao, Xiaopeng Ye, Chen Xu, Weiran Shen, Jun Xu
https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.10511

Towards Long-Term User Welfare in Recommender Systems via Creator-Oriented Information Revelation
Improving the long-term user welfare (e.g., sustained user engagement) has become a central objective of recommender systems (RS). In real-world platforms, the creation behaviors of content creators plays a crucial role in shaping long-term welfare beyond short-term recommendation accuracy, making the effective steering of creator behavior essential to foster a healthier RS ecosystem. Existing works typically rely on re-ranking algorithms that heuristically adjust item exposure to steer creator…

Welfare Benefits - Where it's going: https://eyebeemania.net/2025/10/11/welfare-benefits-where-its-going.html

Welfare Benefits - Where it's going
In the UK, half of the welfare budget goes to in-work …

GTAlign: Game-Theoretic Alignment of LLM Assistants for Mutual Welfare
Siqi Zhu, David Zhang, Pedro Cisneros-Velarde, Jiaxuan You
https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.08872 https://

GTAlign: Game-Theoretic Alignment of LLM Assistants for Mutual Welfare
Large Language Models (LLMs) have achieved remarkable progress in reasoning, yet sometimes produce responses that are suboptimal for users in tasks such as writing, information seeking, or providing practical guidance. Conventional alignment practices typically assume that maximizing model reward also maximizes user welfare, but this assumption frequently fails in practice: models may over-clarify or generate overly verbose reasoning when users prefer concise answers. Such behaviors resemble th…

Low income people don't save, they spend.
The real recipients of welfare are corporations.
Not just through sales, but also because welfare payments are wage subsidies.
The ghost of Keynes is standing over his grave shouting "I fucking told you so!!"
https://syzito.xyz/@selzero/1154914425

Deniz Opal (@selzero@syzito.xyz)
Attached: 1 image This is just. Chef's. Kiss. The US political system is going to restart "socialism" welfare. Not because people will starve. But because the economy will collapse. Low income people don't save, they spend. The real recipients of welfare are corporations. Not just through sales, but also because welfare payments are wage subsidies. The ghost of Keynes is standing over his grave shouting "I fucking told you so!!" https://www.supermarketnews.com/food-accessibility/walmar…

A Hunger for Justice: Why SNAP Cuts Are a Feminist Public Health Issue - Ms. Magazine
https://msmagazine.com/2025/11/07/snap-cuts-feminist-new-deal-welfare-queen-work-requirements-black-women/

Was at an event this weekend where https://safehavenpfoa.org/ had a table advertising their animal shelter and selling merch.
But I'm not sure how much I'd want a PFOA towel... Do they have a PFAS free version? :p

ReformUK and their ilk keep claiming it is easy for asylum seekers. Like if they eventually get settled status, the Home Office immediately makes them homeless. So easy for them, our beneficent welfare system. That's after living on a pittance while awaiting a decision, so no spare money to put down for a deposit.
Andy Burnham makes demand after claims government policies creating homelessness - Manchester Evening News

Andy Burnham makes demand after claims government policies creating homelessness
It comes after the government set out a new plan to tackle homelessness

The Nordics Have Low Inequality Mostly Because of Welfare https://jacobin.com/2025/11/redistribution-inequality-nordic-welfare-state/

The Nordics Have Low Inequality Mostly Because of Welfare
The Nordic countries have far less economic inequality than the United States. Most of the difference is due to the Nordics’ welfare states.

Moody Urbanity - Relations IV 🧶
情绪化城市 - 关系 IV 🧶
📷 Minolta Hi-Matic AF
🎞️ Shanghai GP3 400 Pan
#filmphotography #Photography #blackandwhite

FOIA of AI
https://www.publictechnology.net/2025/10/07/society-and-welfare/our-transparency-rules-need-to-adapt-to-the-rise-of-ai/

Our transparency rules need to adapt to the rise of AI
As automated technology becomes more widely used by public bodies, and for a broader range of purposes, Louise Crow of mySociety outlines why governance rules and processes must keep pace As the government makes a significant investment into AI in public services, we need to update our transp

#California legislature votes new #Law in to ban feline declawing
https://www.mer…

California bans cat declawing under new state law
Leading veterinary organization opposed the bill, animal welfare groups said practice is painful and cruel

Social Welfare Function Leaderboard: When LLM Agents Allocate Social Welfare
Zhengliang Shi, Ruotian Ma, Jen-tse Huang, Xinbei Ma, Xingyu Chen, Mengru Wang, Qu Yang, Yue Wang, Fanghua Ye, Ziyang Chen, Shanyi Wang, Cixing Li, Wenxuan Wang, Zhaopeng Tu, Xiaolong Li, Zhaochun Ren, Linus
https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.01164

Social Welfare Function Leaderboard: When LLM Agents Allocate Social Welfare
Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly entrusted with high-stakes decisions that affect human welfare. However, the principles and values that guide these models when distributing scarce societal resources remain largely unexamined. To address this, we introduce the Social Welfare Function (SWF) Benchmark, a dynamic simulation environment where an LLM acts as a sovereign allocator, distributing tasks to a heterogeneous community of recipients. The benchmark is designed to create a persis…

Stability in Online Assignment Games
Emile Martinez, Felipe Garrido-Lucero, Umberto Grandi
https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.09814 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2510.0981…

Stability in Online Assignment Games
The assignment game models a housing market where buyers and sellers are matched, and transaction prices are set so that the resulting allocation is stable. Shapley and Shubik showed that every stable allocation is necessarily built on a maximum social welfare matching. In practice, however, stable allocations are rarely attainable, as matchings are often sub-optimal, particularly in online settings where eagents arrive sequentially to the market. In this paper, we introduce and compare two com…

Maritime Port Supply Chain Resilience: A Systematic Review
Digvijay Redekar, Ronald Askin, Feng Ju
https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.09844 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2…

Maritime Port Supply Chain Resilience: A Systematic Review
Maritime transportation systems (MTS) play a crucial role in ensuring the uninterrupted supply of essential goods and services, impacting the economy, border security and general welfare. However, MTS operations face disruptions from natural disasters, man-made disturbances, or cascading combinations of these events. These threats can disrupt trade routes, pose serious risks to personnel, and damage critical port infrastructure. In today's advanced technological world, MTS also face growing thr…

Is your mailbox or PO box often filled to its limit (or beyond) by ULINE catalogs and promo mailings?
Do you wonder at the increasing cost of US Postal service, especially, for anything thicker than an few pages or an SD card (USB flash drives are too thick and get bumped into the parcel post price range)?
Are you tired of brand-R $billionaires complain of welfare queens and government giveaways to the "woke".
Well, meet Richard and Elizabeth Uihlein, owners of UL…

ULINE - Shipping Boxes, Shipping Supplies, Packaging Materials, Packing Supplies
Uline stocks over 43,000 shipping boxes, packing materials, warehouse supplies, material handling and more. Same day shipping for cardboard boxes, plastic bags, janitorial, retail and shipping supplies.

Digital ID – The New Chains of Capitalist Surveillance
[…] From passports to colonial passbooks, from welfare cards to border regimes, the apparatus of identification has always been tied to domination. Digital ID is simply the latest iteration of this long history, but with a scale and sophistication that makes its dangers even more profound. […]
👷

Digital ID – The New Chains of Capitalist Surveillance - Aotearoa Workers Solidarity Movement
The world is entering an era where identity is no longer a matter of personal relationships, lived experience, or even paperwork. Increasingly, it is reduced...

And just sometimes there are encouraging news stories - and boy how different from my school and college eating spaces:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/nov/07/…

And just sometimes there are encouraging news stories - and boy how different from my school and college eating spaces:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/nov/07/…

Marshawn Kneeland was subject of welfare checks at Western Michigan, according to report https://www.foxsports.com/articles/nfl/marshawn-kneeland-was-subject-of-welfare-checks-at-western-michigan-according-to-report

Ranking Policies Under Loss Aversion and Inequality Aversion
Martyna Kobus, Rados{\l}aw Kurek, Thomas Parker
https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.09590 https://arxiv…

Ranking Policies Under Loss Aversion and Inequality Aversion
Strong empirical evidence from laboratory experiments, and more recently from population surveys, shows that individuals, when evaluating their situations, pay attention to whether they experience gains or losses, with losses weighing more heavily than gains. The electorate's loss aversion, in turn, influences politicians' choices. We propose a new framework for welfare analysis of policy outcomes that, in addition to the traditional focus on post-policy incomes, also accounts for individuals' …

Today we celebrate all the wonderful creatures who share our planet. Happy World Animal Day! May every animal live a life full of love, kindness, and care.
#worldanimalday

Researching inequality – Northampton and the Welfare State https://edintone.com/northampton_1913-24/ Two studies of Northampton in 1913 and 1924 give us a detailed view of working-class life

Researching inequality - Northampton and the Welfare State - Miscellanea Edintone
Two studies of Northampton in 1913 and 1924 give us a detailed view of working-class life and economic conditions in on the eve of World War 1 and the somewhat better situation in the early 1920s.

Reagan's "Welfare Queen" rhetoric was a dog whistle. The whole "southern strategy" was full of dog whistles. Every time Republicans talked about gay marriage as a "states rights" issue, those were dog whistles. Naming a government agency "the Department of Homeland Security" was a dog whistle. Trump's speeches leading up to his first term were full of dog whistles.
Nazis have total control of all branches of government. They've cut off funding to all but the most oppressive elements of the government. There are concentration camps, both in client states (CECOT, among others) and in the US (Alligator Auschwitz, among others). They're actively carrying out ethnic cleansing.
When DHS puts out some Nazi shit, it's not a dog whistle. It's a vuvuzela. They're not trying to signal their intent without any of the "normies" noticing. They actively doing what they wanted to do. It's not a signal because there's nothing to signal. It's a celebration.
#USPol

🇺🇦 #NowPlaying on #KEXP's #SoundsOfSurvivance
Jean-Paul Bourelly:
🎵 Welfare Flower Child
#JeanPaulBourelly
https://bourelly.bandcamp.com/track/welfare-flower-child
https://open.spotify.com/track/3eG0vJpwrM10udEm8ffy9q
🎶 KEXP playlist 👇
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6VNALrOa3gWbk794YuIrwg

"Quite how Schrodinger’s Russian army, currently moving at a snail’s pace across the Ukrainian plains, can simultaneously present an existential threat to Starmer’s Camden constituency remains to be explained but the Premier chose the British/US arms giant BAE Systems’ Clydeside shipyard to insist that military spending should be prioritised over welfare and public services."
Dangerous times threaten as Labour’s militarism expands | Morning Star

We joined with some friends this morning for a greyhound walk in Bedfont Lakes. I didn't have a hound to bring because the only one I can borrow now is Violet and she's too old to walk that distance. The three people we met up with had 5 dogs between them though, so Lynn let me keep hold of her boy Freddie.
I didn't take any photos because it was really cold and my hands were full! But here's a recent photo of Freddie.

Generalization and the Rise of System-level Creativity in Science
Hongbo Fang, James Evans
https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.03240 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2510.0324…

Generalization and the Rise of System-level Creativity in Science
Innovation ecosystems require careful policy stewardship to drive sustained advance in human health, welfare, security and prosperity. We develop new measures that reliably decompose the influence of innovations in terms of the degree to which each represents a field-level foundation, an extension of foundational work, or a generalization that synthesizes and modularizes contributions from distant fields to catalyze combinatorial innovation. Using 23 million scientific works, we demonstrate tha…

Records: WMU police called twice to aid Kneeland https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/47050562/western-michigan-police-twice-called-check-marshawn-kneeland

"
Reps. Luna, Valadao, and Garbarino declare the rebranded EATS Act a threat to family farmers and a legislative invitation to foreign-owned factory farms."
Republican Lawmakers Declare Opposition to Legislation to Overturn the States’ Most Important Farm Animal Welfare Laws - Legal Reader
https://www.legalreader.com/republican-lawmakers-declare-opposition-to-legislation-to-overturn-the-states-most-important-farm-animal-welfare-laws/

Risk-Adjusted Policy Learning and the Social Cost of Uncertainty: Theory and Evidence from CAP evaluation
Giovanni Cerulli, Francesco Caracciolo
https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.05007

Risk-Adjusted Policy Learning and the Social Cost of Uncertainty: Theory and Evidence from CAP evaluation
This paper develops a risk-adjusted alternative to standard optimal policy learning (OPL) for observational data by importing Roy's (1952) safety-first principle into the treatment assignment problem. We formalize a welfare functional that maximizes the probability that outcomes exceed a socially required threshold and show that the associated pointwise optimal rule ranks treatments by the ratio of conditional means to conditional standard deviations. We implement the framework using microdata …

Sonnet 118 - CXVIII
Like as, to make our appetite more keen,
With eager compounds we our palate urge;
As, to prevent our maladies unseen,
We sicken to shun sickness when we purge;
Even so, being full of your ne'er-cloying sweetness,
To bitter sauces did I frame my feeding;
And, sick of welfare, found a kind of meetness
To be diseased, ere that there was true needing.
Thus policy in love, to anticipate
The ills that were not, gre…

Digital welfare fraud detection and the Dutch SyRI judgment
Marvin van Bekkum, Frederik Zuiderveen Borgesius
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.23843 https://arxiv…

Digital welfare fraud detection and the Dutch SyRI judgment
In 2020, a Dutch court passed judgment in a case about a digital welfare fraud detection system called Systeem Risico Indicatie (SyRI). The court ruled that the SyRI legislation is unlawful because it does not comply with the right to privacy under the European Convention of Human Rights. In this article we analyse the judgment and its implications. This ruling is one of first in which a court has invalidated a welfare fraud detection system for breaching the right to privacy. We show that the …

Audit the Whisper: Detecting Steganographic Collusion in Multi-Agent LLMs
Om Tailor
https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.04303 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2510.04303

Audit the Whisper: Detecting Steganographic Collusion in Multi-Agent LLMs
Multi-agent deployments of large language models (LLMs) are increasingly embedded in market, allocation, and governance workflows, yet covert coordination among agents can silently erode trust and social welfare. Existing audits are dominated by heuristics that lack theoretical guarantees, struggle to transfer across tasks, and seldom ship with the infrastructure needed for independent replication. We introduce \emph{Audit the Whisper}, a conference-grade research artifact that spans theory, be…

Inverse Portfolio Optimization with Synthetic Investor Data: Recovering Risk Preferences under Uncertainty
Jinho Cha, Long Pham, Thi Le Hoa Vo, Jaeyoung Cho, Jaejin Lee
https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.06986

Inverse Portfolio Optimization with Synthetic Investor Data: Recovering Risk Preferences under Uncertainty
This study develops an inverse portfolio optimization framework for recovering latent investor preferences including risk aversion, transaction cost sensitivity, and ESG orientation from observed portfolio allocations. Using controlled synthetic data, we assess the estimator's statistical properties such as consistency, coverage, and dynamic regret. The model integrates robust optimization and regret-based inference to quantify welfare losses under preference misspecification and market shocks.…

> one in three service users cannot access online support without help – a figure that rises to more than six in ten for some benefits.
https://www.publictechnology.net/2025/09/29/society-and-welfare…

One in three cannot access online benefits without help, DWP study finds
Government’s welfare department has published the latest version of a major citizen study which finds that, for some benefit lines, more than three in five cannot use internet services unassisted A Department for Work and Pensions study of thousands of citizens has found that one in three ser

Beyond Revenue and Welfare: Counterfactual Analysis of Spectrum Auctions with Application to Canada's 3800MHz Allocation
Sara Jalili Shani, Kris Joseph, Michael B. McNally, James R. Wright
https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.08106 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2512.08106 https://arxiv.org/html/2512.08106
arXiv:2512.08106v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: Spectrum auctions are the primary mechanism through which governments allocate scarce radio frequencies, with outcomes that shape competition, coverage, and innovation in telecommunications markets. While traditional models of spectrum auctions often rely on strong equilibrium assumptions, we take a more parsimonious approach by modeling bidders as myopic and straightforward: in each round, firms simply demand the bundle that maximizes their utility given current prices. Despite its simplicity, this model proves effective in predicting the outcomes of Canada's 2023 auction of 3800 MHz spectrum licenses. Using detailed round-by-round bidding data, we estimate bidders' valuations through a linear programming framework and validate that our model reproduces key features of the observed allocation and price evolution. We then use these estimated valuations to simulate a counterfactual auction under an alternative mechanism that incentivizes deployment in rural and remote regions, aligning with one of the key objectives set out in the Canadian Telecommunications Act. The results show that the proposed mechanism substantially improves population coverage in underserved areas. These findings demonstrate that a behavioral model with minimal assumptions is sufficient to generate reliable counterfactual predictions, making it a practical tool for policymakers to evaluate how alternative auction designs may influence future outcomes. In particular, our study demonstrates a method for counterfactual mechanism design, providing a framework to evaluate how alternative auction rules could advance policy goals such as equitable deployment across Canada.
toXiv_bot_toot

Top OECD performers in green growth - an FOI model analysis
Zoltan Bartha
https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.02367 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2510.02367

Top OECD performers in green growth - an FOI model analysis
With rising concerns about climate change, the issue of green growth have been growing in importance. The aim of this study is to establish a measurement method for green growth, and to identify the best performing countries in this field. The Future, Outside, and Inside (FOI) development model was used to measure the performance of the 38 OECD countries. Based on their 2019-20 scores, the countries that are top performers in green growth are the members of the so called Welfare-participatory c…

Amidst all the talk of capping welfare, it's vital to recognise that
- Over 7 million households are missing out on benefits they are entitled to.
- £24 billion of support is unclaimed.
Missing Out 2025 | Policy in Practice https://policyinpractice.co.uk/publicatio…

Missing Out 2025 | Policy in Practice
£24 billion of support is unclaimed. Over 7 million households are missing out on record support, driven by under claiming and new eligibility.

Researching inequality – Northampton and the Welfare State https://edintone.com/northampton_1913-24/ Two studies of Northampton in 1913 and 1924 give us a detailed view of working-class life. @…

Researching inequality - Northampton and the Welfare State - Miscellanea Edintone
Two studies of Northampton in 1913 and 1924 give us a detailed view of working-class life and economic conditions in on the eve of World War 1 and the somewhat better situation in the early 1920s.

Pretty good analysis from @… but subtleties make it difficult to translate Danish model elsewhere. It's a PR system, so always coalitions many different flavours to vote for; Danish Peoples Party are left on welfare but not on immigration

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/nov/22/danish-model-centre-left-parties-labour-doesnt-work

Replaced article(s) found for q-fin.RM. https://arxiv.org/list/q-fin.RM/new
[1/1]:
- Optimal risk sharing, equilibria, and welfare with empirically realistic risk attitudes
Jean-Gabriel Lauzier, Liyuan Lin, Peter Wakker, Ruodu Wang

It seems progressive and social democratic politicians are at a loss over how to win elections and gain popularity, so here are my tips.
1. Increase taxes for the rich.
2. Stop subsidies to companies making huge profits.
3. Invest in social welfare programmes like education, health care, and the like.
4. Stop investing in war criminals like the Israeli government.
5. Enact policies to stop the climate crisis.
6. Subsidise working families to protect them from t…

"Farage’s anti-migrant shocker is also about crushing his real hate: the welfare state" | Morning Star
https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/farages-anti-migrant-shocker-also-about-crushing-his-real-hate-welfare-…

Selling Privacy in Blockchain Transactions
Georgios Chionas, Olga Gorelkina, Piotr Krysta, Rida Laraki
https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.08096 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2512.08096 https://arxiv.org/html/2512.08096
arXiv:2512.08096v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: We study methods to enhance privacy in blockchain transactions from an economic angle. We consider mechanisms for privacy-aware users whose utility depends not only on the outcome of the mechanism but also negatively on the exposure of their economic preferences. Specifically, we study two auction-theoretic settings with privacy-aware users. First, we analyze an order flow auction, where a user auctions off to specialized agents, called searchers, the right to execute her transaction while maintaining a degree of privacy. We examine how the degree of privacy affects the revenue of the auction and, broadly, the net utility of the privacy-aware user. In this new setting, we describe the optimal auction, which is a sealed-bid auction. Subsequently, we analyze a variant of a Dutch auction in which the user gradually decreases the price and the degree of privacy until the transaction is sold. We compare the revenue of this auction to that of the optimal one as a function of the number of communication rounds. Then, we introduce a two-sided market - a privacy marketplace - with multiple users selling their transactions under their privacy preferences to multiple searchers. We propose a posted-price mechanism for the two-sided market that guarantees constant approximation of the optimal social welfare while maintaining incentive compatibility (from both sides of the market) and budget balance. This work builds on the emerging line of research that attempts to improve the performance of economic mechanisms by appending cryptographic primitives to them.
toXiv_bot_toot

Replaced article(s) found for econ.TH. https://arxiv.org/list/econ.TH/new
[1/1]:
- Optimal risk sharing, equilibria, and welfare with empirically realistic risk attitudes
Jean-Gabriel Lauzier, Liyuan Lin, Peter Wakker, Ruodu Wang

The Communication Complexity of Combinatorial Auctions with Additional Succinct Bidders
Frederick V. Qiu, S. Matthew Weinberg, Qianfan Zhang
https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.06585 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2512.06585 https://arxiv.org/html/2512.06585
arXiv:2512.06585v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: We study the communication complexity of welfare maximization in combinatorial auctions with bidders from either a standard valuation class (which require exponential communication to explicitly state, such as subadditive or XOS), or arbitrary succinct valuations (which can be fully described in polynomial communication, such as single-minded). Although succinct valuations can be efficiently communicated, we show that additional succinct bidders have a nontrivial impact on communication complexity of classical combinatorial auctions. Specifically, let $n$ be the number of subadditive/XOS bidders. We show that for SA $\cup$ SC (the union of subadditive and succinct valuations): (1) There is a polynomial communication $3$-approximation algorithm; (2) As $n \to \infty$, there is a matching $3$-hardness of approximation, which (a) is larger than the optimal approximation ratio of $2$ for SA, and (b) holds even for SA $\cup$ SM (the union of subadditive and single-minded valuations); and (3) For all $n \geq 3$, there is a constant separation between the optimal approximation ratios for SA $\cup$ SM and SA (and therefore between SA $\cup$ SC and SA as well). Similarly, we show that for XOS $\cup$ SC: (1) There is a polynomial communication $2$-approximation algorithm; (2) As $n \to \infty$, there is a matching $2$-hardness of approximation, which (a) is larger than the optimal approximation ratio of $e/(e-1)$ for XOS, and (b) holds even for XOS $\cup$ SM; and (3) For all $n \geq 2$, there is a constant separation between the optimal approximation ratios for XOS $\cup$ SM and XOS (and therefore between XOS $\cup$ SC and XOS as well).
toXiv_bot_toot

Regulating Online Algorithmic Pricing: A Comparative Study of Privacy and Data Protection Laws in the EU and US
Zihao Li
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.24345 https://

Regulating Online Algorithmic Pricing: A Comparative Study of Privacy and Data Protection Laws in the EU and US
The emergence of big data, AI and machine learning has allowed sellers and online platforms to tailor pricing for customers in real-time. While online algorithmic pricing can increase efficiency, market welfare, and optimize pricing strategies for sellers and companies, it poses a threat to the fundamental values of privacy, digital autonomy, and non-discrimination, raising legal and ethical concerns. On both sides of the Atlantic, legislators have endeavoured to regulate online algorithmic pri…

Structuring Collective Action with LLM-Guided Evolution: From Ill-Structured Problems to Executable Heuristics
Kevin Bradley Dsouza, Graham Alexander Watt, Yuri Leonenko, Juan Moreno-Cruz
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.20412

Structuring Collective Action with LLM-Guided Evolution: From Ill-Structured Problems to Executable Heuristics
Collective action problems, which require aligning individual incentives with collective goals, are classic examples of Ill-Structured Problems (ISPs). For an individual agent, the causal links between local actions and global outcomes are unclear, stakeholder objectives often conflict, and no single, clear algorithm can bridge micro-level choices with macro-level welfare. We present ECHO-MIMIC, a computational framework that converts this global complexity into a tractable, Well-Structured Pro…

Invariant Price of Anarchy: a Metric for Welfarist Traffic Control
Ilia Shilov, Mingjia He, Heinrich H. Nax, Emilio Frazzoli, Gioele Zardini, Saverio Bolognani
https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.05843 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2512.05843 https://arxiv.org/html/2512.05843
arXiv:2512.05843v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: The Price of Anarchy (PoA) is a standard metric for quantifying inefficiency in socio-technical systems, widely used to guide policies like traffic tolling. Conventional PoA analysis relies on exact numerical costs. However, in many settings, costs represent agents' preferences and may be defined only up to possibly arbitrary scaling and shifting, representing informational and modeling ambiguities. We observe that while such transformations preserve equilibrium and optimal outcomes, they change the PoA value. To resolve this issue, we rely on results from Social Choice Theory and define the Invariant PoA. By connecting admissible transformations to degrees of comparability of agents' costs, we derive the specific social welfare functions which ensure that efficiency evaluations do not depend on arbitrary rescalings or translations of individual costs. Case studies on a toy example and the Zurich network demonstrate that identical tolling strategies can lead to substantially different efficiency estimates depending on the assumed comparability. Our framework thus demonstrates that explicit axiomatic foundations are necessary in order to define efficiency metrics and to appropriately guide policy in large-scale infrastructure design robustly and effectively.
toXiv_bot_toot

Incentive Analysis of Collusion in Fair Division
Haoqiang Huang, Biaoshuai Tao, Mingwei Yang, Shengwei Zhou
https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.01689 https://arxiv.…

Incentive Analysis of Collusion in Fair Division
We study fair division problems with strategic agents capable of gaining advantages by manipulating their reported preferences. Although several impossibility results have revealed the incompatibility of truthfulness with standard fairness criteria, subsequent works have circumvented this limitation through the incentive ratio framework. Previous studies demonstrate that fundamental mechanisms like Maximum Nash Welfare (MNW) and Probabilistic Serial (PS) for divisible goods, and Round-Robin (RR…

Achieving Pareto Optimality in Games via Single-bit Feedback
Seref Taha Kiremitci, Ahmed Said Donmez, Muhammed O. Sayin
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.25921 https://

Achieving Pareto Optimality in Games via Single-bit Feedback
Efficient coordination in multi-agent systems often incurs high communication overhead or slow convergence rates, making scalable welfare optimization difficult. We propose Single-Bit Coordination Dynamics for Pareto-Efficient Outcomes (SBC-PE), a decentralized learning algorithm requiring only a single-bit satisfaction signal per agent each round. Despite this extreme efficiency, SBC-PE guarantees convergence to the exact optimal solution in arbitrary finite games. We establish explicit regret…

Replaced article(s) found for cs.GT. https://arxiv.org/list/cs.GT/new
[1/1]:
- Optimal Type-Dependent Liquid Welfare Guarantees for Autobidding Agents with Budgets
Colini-Baldeschi, Klumper, Kroll, Leonardi, Sch\"afer, Tsikiridis