Date:
Location:
Speaker
Connor Jerzak (UT Austin), "Selecting Optimal Candidate Profiles in Adversarial Environments Using Conjoint Analysis" (Joint w/Kosuke Imai)
Abstract
Conjoint analysis, an application of factorial experimental design, is a popular tool in social science research for studying multidimensional preferences. In such experiments in the political analysis context, respondents are asked to choose between two hypothetical political candidates with randomly selected features, which can include partisanship, policy positions, gender and race. We consider the problem of identifying optimal candidate profiles. Because the number of unique feature combinations far exceeds the total number of observations in a typical conjoint experiment, it is impossible to determine the optimal profile exactly. To address this identification challenge, we derive an optimal stochastic intervention that represents a probability distribution of various attributes aimed at achieving the most favorable average outcome. We first consider an environment where one political party optimizes their candidate selection. We then move to the more realistic case where two political parties optimize their own candidate selection simultaneously and in opposition to each other. We apply the proposed methodology to an existing candidate choice conjoint experiment concerning vote choice for US president. We find that, in contrast to the non-adversarial approach, expected outcomes in the adversarial regime fall within range of historical electoral outcomes, with optimal strategies suggested by the method more likely to match the actual observed candidates compared to strategies derived from a non-adversarial approach. These findings indicate that incorporating adversarial dynamics into conjoint analysis may yield unique insight into social science data from experiments.
The Applied Statistics Workshop (Gov 3009) meets all academic year, Wednesdays, 12pm-1:30pm, in CGIS K354. This workshop is a forum for advanced graduate students, faculty, and visiting scholars to present and discuss methodological or empirical work in progress in an interdisciplinary setting. The workshop features a tour of Harvard's statistical innovations and applications with weekly stops in different fields and disciplines and includes occasional presentations by invited speakers.
More information is available at the Gov 3009 website: https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/applied.stats.workshop-gov3009
All interested Harvard affiliates are invited to attend.