Parameterized algorithmics for computational social choice : nine research challenges

In: ISSN:1007-0214

Abstract

Computational Social Choice is an interdisciplinary research area involving Economics, Political Science, and Social Science on the one side, and Mathematics and Computer Science (including Artificial Intelligence and Multiagent Systems) on the other side. Typical computational problems studied in this field include the vulnerability of voting procedures against attacks, or preference aggregation in multi-agent systems. Parameterized Algorithmics is a subfield of Theoretical Computer Science seeking to exploit meaningful problem-specific parameters in order to identify tractable special cases of in general computationally hard problems. In this paper, we propose nine of our favorite research challenges concerning the parameterized complexity of problems appearing in this context. This work is dedicated to Jianer Chen, one of the strongest problem solvers in the history of parameterized algorithmics, on the occasion of his 60th birthday. Keywords: NP-hard problems; parameterized complexity; fixed-parameter tractability; kernelization; exact algorithms; voting; decision making; cake cutting