Optimal Questionnaires for Screening of Strategic Agents
This addresses a challenge for health authorities in identifying susceptible cases despite strategic misreporting, but it appears incremental as it focuses on theoretical limits rather than practical solutions.
The paper tackles the problem of screening strategic agents, such as travelers during the COVID-19 pandemic who may misreport their travel history, to classify them for further testing. It shows fundamental limits on how many travel histories can be recovered, indicating constraints on accurate classification.
During the COVID-$19$ pandemic the health authorities at airports and train stations try to screen and identify the travellers possibly exposed to the virus. However, many individuals avoid getting tested and hence may misreport their travel history. This is a challenge for the health authorities who wish to ascertain the truly susceptible cases in spite of this strategic misreporting. We investigate the problem of questioning travellers to classify them for further testing when the travellers are strategic or are unwilling to reveal their travel histories. We show there are fundamental limits to how many travel histories the health authorities can recover.% can be correctly classified by any probing mechanism.