Title: How Do Classifiers Induce Agents To Invest Effort Strategically?,
Abstract: Algorithms are often used to produce decision-making rules that classify or
evaluate individuals. When these individuals have incentives to be classified a
certain way, they may behave strategically to influence their outcomes. We
develop a model for how strategic agents can invest effort in order to change
the outcomes they receive, and we give a tight characterization of when such
agents can be incentivized to invest specified forms of effort into improving
their outcomes as opposed to "gaming" the classifier. We show that whenever any
"reasonable" mechanism can do so, a simple linear mechanism suffices.