PhD Defense Information

Title -- Designing Marketplaces and Civic Engagement Platforms: Learning, Incentives, and Pricing

Abstract -- Platforms increasingly mediate interactions between people: both helping us find work and transportation, and supporting our civic society through discussion and decision-making. Principled system design requires formalizing the platform's objective and understanding the incentives, behavioral tendencies, and capabilities of participants; in turn, the design influences participant behavior. In this dissertation, I describe work designing platforms in two domains -- two-sided marketplaces and civic engagement platforms -- combining both theoretical and empirical analyses of such systems. First, I consider the design of surge pricing that is incentive compatible for drivers in ride-hailing platforms. Second, I tackle rating system inflation and design on online platforms. Finally, I study the design and deployment of systems for participatory budgeting. The work in this dissertation has informed deployments at Uber, a large online labor platform, and in participatory budgeting elections across the U.S.

Advisors -- Ashish Goel & Ramesh Johari

Public Webinar links
Zoom (Can ask questions via audio/chat): https://stanford.zoom.us/j/830979782
Youtube Live (~20 second latency, view only): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b4KMVQWpPmY

Time -- Friday, April 10, 10 – 11 am PDT (1 – 2pm EDT)