Distortion in Social Choice Problems: The First 15 Years and Beyond

Elliot Anshelevich, Aris Filos-Ratsikas, Nisarg Shah, Alexandros A. Voudouris

Abstract: The notion of distortion in social choice problems has been defined to measure the loss in efficiency -- typically measured by the utilitarian social welfare, the sum of utilities of the participating agents -- due to having access only to limited information about the preferences of the agents. We survey the most significant results of the literature on distortion from the past 15 years, and highlight important open problems and the most promising avenues of ongoing and future work.