Seminars

Roy-Adres Seminar Economic Theory

The aim of the Roy seminar is mainly the development of Economic Theory, in particular through its ramifications towards applied fields including Industrial Organization, Market Design, Insurance, Finance, Public economics, Political economy, Labor economics and the dialog with complementary methodologies (structural econometrics, experimental
economics).
> Administrative correspondant: No Rakotovao (no.rakotovao at psemail.eu)
> In charge : Evan Friedman - Co-organizers: David Spector, and Franz Ostrizek

This seminar is co-funded by a French government subsidy managed by the Agence Nationale de la Recherche under the framework of the Investissements d’avenir programme reference ANR-17-EURE-0001.

This seminar is subsidised by Sciences Po.

Subscribe to this mailing list

Upcoming events

Monday 11 December 2023 17:00-18:30
BACCARA Mariagiovanna (Washington University in St Louis) : Research Waves
LEVY John
Monday 4 March 2024 17:00-18:30
GILBOA Itzhak (Tel-Aviv and HEC) : *
Monday 11 March 2024 17:00-18:30
R1-09
VIVES Xavier (IESE) : *
Monday 18 March 2024 17:00-18:30
R1-09
ORTOLEVA Pietro (Princeton) : *
Monday 22 April 2024 17:00-18:30
R1-09
IIJIMA Ryota (Yale) : *
Monday 29 April 2024 17:00-18:30
R1-09
RUBINSTEIN Ariel (NYU) : *
Monday 6 May 2024 17:00-18:30
DILLENBERGER David (UPenn) : *
Monday 13 May 2024 17:00-18:30
R1-09
HAUSER Daniel (Aalto) : *
Monday 27 May 2024 17:00-18:30
LIZZERI Alessandro (Princeton) : *
Monday 3 June 2024 17:00-18:30
R1-09
MATEJKA Filip (CERGE-EI) : *
Monday 10 June 2024 17:00-13:30
R1-15
LIU Qingmin (Michigan State university) : *
Monday 17 June 2024 17:00-18:30
R1-15
NUNEZ Mathias (CREST - Ecole Polytechnique) : *

Archives

Monday 4 December 2023 17:00-18:30
R1-09
SANDMANN Christopher (LSE) : Market Structure and Adverse Selection (with Dakang Huang)
Abstract
This paper adopts a uni?ed perspective on multi-contracting in competitive markets plagued by adverse selection. We subsume the two polar cases of exclusive and nonexclu-sive competition by introducing the concept of a market structure, i.e., a trading rule thatspeci?es the subset of sellers with whom buyers can jointly trade. The existing literature shows that the market structure matters greatly in shaping competitive allocations, allow-ing for either separating allocations (as shown by Rothschild-Stiglitz) or layered pooling(Jaynes-Hellwig-Glosten) allocations. We prove the existence of intermediate “Pooling +Separating” equilibria that allow for simultaneous pooling and low-risk buyer separation.Crucially, those allocations alleviate at the same time the concern of excessive rationing under separation of and cross-subsidies paid by low-risk buyers. They oftentimes Pareto dominate the Rothschild-Stiglitz separating allocation. Our analysis singles out the “1+1”market structure where sellers are separated into two subgroups so that buyers can trade with at most one seller from each subgroup. Any “Pooling + Separating” allocation is an equilibrium here. Finally, we prove that “Pooling + Separating” allocations satisfy a notion of stability that we call serendipitous-aftermarket-proofness.
Monday 27 November 2023 17:00-18:30
R1-09
BLUME Andreas (U. of Arizona) : Meaning in Communication Games
Abstract
This paper addresses two related questions: How can we model the strategic use of a pre-existing language? And, how should we capture different degrees of sharing that language? The paper proposes an iterative procedure, interpreted as a mental process on part of the sender, that associates a set of equilibria, which we dub language equilibria, with every combination of a sender-receiver game and a pre-existing language. Every sender-receiver game has a language equilibrium. Language equilibrium makes sharp predictions about equilibrium outcomes (taken to be joint distributions over types and actions) in common-interest games, in games with sender-ideal equilibria, and in games with partial incentive alignment. Predictions are sensitive to the degree to which language is shared. Importantly, language equilibrium makes predictions about language use, i.e., joint distributions over types, actions, and messages.
Monday 20 November 2023 17:00-18:30
R1-09
KE Shaowei (China Europe International Business School (CEIBS).) : *
Monday 20 November 2023 17:00-18:30
R1-09
KE Shaowei (China Europe International Business School (CEIBS).) : Decision Making Under Multidimensional Uncertainty
Abstract
Choice alternatives are often multidimensional and risky, but how to evaluate them is unclear. Three approaches are in sharp contrast: One aggregates all dimensions and then evaluates risk, one works reversely, and one evaluates each dimension and the associated risk recursively following an exogenous linear order on dimensions. We characterize a model that nests them as special cases. The decision maker's preference reveals how she brackets and orders the dimensions, based on which she evaluates risk recursively. Using our framework, we derive a model with generalized brackets and a recursive model with a subjective weak order on dimensions.
Thursday 16 November 2023 13:15-14:30
GOEREE Jacob (University of New South Wales) : S EQUILIBRIUM: A SYNTHESIS OF (BEHAVIORAL) GAME THEORY
Abstract
S equilibrium synthesizes a century of game-theoretic modeling. S-beliefs determine choices as in the refinement literature and level-k, without anchoring on Nash equilibrium or imposing ad hoc belief formation. S-choices allow for mistakes as in QRE, without imposing rational expectations. S equilibrium is explicitly set-valued to avoid the common practice of selecting the best prediction from an implicitly defined set of unknown, and unaccounted for, size. S-equilibrium sets vary with a complexity parameter, offering a trade-off between accuracy and precision unlike in M equilibrium. Simple “areametrics” determine the model’s parameter and show that choice sets with a relative size of 5% capture 58% of the data. Goodnessof- fit tests applied to data from a broad array of experimental games confirm S equilibrium’s ability to predict behavior in and out of sample. In contrast, choice (belief) predictions of level-k and QRE are rejected in most (all) games.
Monday 23 October 2023 17:00-18:30
R1-09
ORLOV Dmitry (Wisconsin-Madison) : Exchanging Information (with Andrzej Skrzypacz and Pavel Zryumov)
Abstract
We analyze a class of dynamic games of information exchange between two players. Each agent possesses information about a binary state that is of interest to the other player and cares about the other player’s actions. Preferences are additively separable over own and the other player’s actions. We fully characterize the set of equilibrium payoffs that can be sustained in such games and construct equilibria that achieve those payoffs. We show that gradual information exchange dominates static (one-shot) communication. Moreover, the whole set of outcomes that Pareto-dominate static communication can be supported in equilibrium.
Monday 16 October 2023 17:00-18:30
R1-09
NETZER Nick (U Zurich) : Endogenous Risk Attitudes (with Arthur Robson, Jakub Steiner and Pavel Kocourek)
Abstract
In a model inspired by neuroscience, we show that constrained optimal perception encodes lottery rewards using an S-shaped encoding function and over-samples low- probability events. The implications of this perception strategy for behavior depend on the decision-maker’s understanding of the risk. The strategy does not distort choice in the limit as perception frictions vanish when the decision-maker fully understands the decision problem. If, however, the decision-maker underrates the complexity of the decision problem, then risk attitudes re?ect properties of the perception strategy even for vanishing perception frictions. The model explains adaptive risk attitudes and probability weighting as in prospect theory and, additionally, predicts that risk attitudes are strengthened by time pressure and attenuated by anticipation of large risks.
Monday 9 October 2023 17:00-18:30
R1-09
COLLIARD Jean-Edouard (HEC) : Algorithmic Pricing and Liquidity in Securities Markets
Abstract
We let "Algorithmic Market-Makers" (AMMs), using Q-learning algorithms, choose prices for a risky asset when their clients are privately informed about the asset payoff. We find that AMMs learn to cope with adverse selection and to update their prices after observing trades, as predicted by economic theory. However, in contrast to theory, AMMs charge a mark-up over the competitive price, which declines with the number of AMMs. Interestingly, markups tend to decrease with AMMs’ exposure to adverse selection. Accordingly, the sensitivity of quotes to trades is stronger than that predicted by theory and AMMs’ quotes become less competitive over time as asymmetric information declines.
Monday 2 October 2023 17:00-18:30
R1-09
KUVALEKAR Aditya (Essex) : Similarity of Information in Games (with Joyee Deb and Deepak Basak)
Monday 25 September 2023 17:00-18:15
Salle R1-09, Campus Jourdan, 75014 Paris
SAFONOV Evgenii (Queen Mary University of London) : Slow and Easy, a Theory of Browsing
Abstract
An agent needs to choose the best alternative drawn randomly with replacement from a menu of unknown composition. The agent is boundedly rational and employs an automaton decision rule: she has finitely many memory states, and, in each, she can inquire about some attribute of the currently drawn alternative and transition (possibly stochastically) either to another state or to a decision. Defining the complexity of a decision rule by the number of transitions, I study the minimal complexity of a decision rule that allows the agent to choose the best alternative from any menu with probability arbitrarily close to one. Agents in my model differ in their languages— collections of binary attributes used to describe alternatives. My first result shows that the tight lower bound on complexity among all languages is 3, where m is the number of alternatives valued distinctly. My second result provides a linear upper bound. Finally, I call adaptive a language that facilitates additive utility representation with the smallest number of attributes. My third result shows that an adaptive language always admits the least complex decision rule that solves the choice problem. When for a natural n, a language admits the least complex decision rule if and only if it is adaptive.
Full text [pdf]
Monday 18 September 2023 17:00-18:15
Salle R1-09, Campus Jourdan, 75014 Paris
PARK In-Uck (Bristol) : *Information Sale and Trade (joint with Robert Evans)
Abstract
We study design and pricing of information by a monopoly information provider (A) for a buyer in a trading relationship with a seller. If A may only offer a single information structure the profit-maximizing one has a simple, binary threshold character. If A may offer a menu of priced information structures it is optimal to offer a continuum of thresholds which induce a unit-elastic demand function for the seller who sets the highest price with a positive demand. The equilibrium is inefficient unless seller production cost exceeds the mean buyer valuation: in this case, A enhances welfare if cost is high enough (yet below the mean buyer valuation) but reduces it if cost is low enough.
Full text [pdf]
Monday 11 September 2023 17:00-18:15
Salle R1-09, Campus Jourdan, 75014 Paris
LANZANI Giacomo (UC Berkeley) : *Selective Memory Equilibrium, with Drew Fudenberg and Philipp Strack
Abstract
We study agents who are more likely to remember some experiences than others but update beliefs as if the experiences they remember are the only ones that occurred. We show that if the agent’s behavior converges, their limit strategy is a selective memory equilibrium. We illustrate how this new equilibrium concept can be used to understand the long-run effects of several well-documented memory biases. We then extend our analysis to cases where the expected number of recalled experiences is bounded. Here we characterize the long-run action frequencies that can arise.
Monday 26 June 2023 17:00-18:15
Salle R1-09, Campus Jourdan, 75014 Paris
*
Monday 19 June 2023 17:00-18:15
Salle R1-09, Campus Jourdan, 75014 Paris
DE CLIPPEL GEOFFROY (University of Brown) : *Departures from Preference Maximization and Violations of the Sure-Thing Principle''.
Abstract
This paper provides a warning: a property in the spirit of the sure-thing principle that may sound intuitive at first, and is indeed taken for granted in benchmark models, is most often violated when considering choices inconsistent with preference maximization. Beyond (individual and social) choice theory, this observation has implications for game theory and mechanism design. Some of the lessons include: dynamic consistency with respect to the resolution of uncertainty implies rationality over constant acts, totally-mixed beliefs cannot be overlooked when checking dominance in games, dominance in extensive-form games is not equivalent to dominance when choosing behind the veil of ignorance in their associated strategic forms, generalizations of serial dictatorship, and only those rules, are dominant-strategy implementable over the largest domain of all choice functions, and it becomes preferable to use dynamic mechanisms.
Monday 12 June 2023 17:00-18:15
Salle R1-09, Campus Jourdan, 75014 Paris
SHAHANAGHI Sara (TSE) : *Competition and Herding in Breaking News
Abstract
I present a dynamic model of breaking news. News firms are rewarded for reporting before their competitors but also for making reports that are credible to consumers. Errors occur when firms fake, reporting a story despite lacking evidence. While errors occur in equilibrium even under a monopoly, competition and observational learning exacerbate errors and give rise to rich dynamics in firm behavior. Competition intensifies faking by engendering a preemptive motive, but the haste-inducing effect of preemption is endogenously mitigated by gradual improvement in report credibility over the course of a news cycle. Meanwhile, observational learning causes existing errors to propagate through the market. This is driven by a copycat effect, in which one report triggers an immediate surge in faking by others. This behavior is consistent with herding on the decision to report a story as well as herding on the timing of reports.
Monday 5 June 2023 17:00-18:15
Salle R1-09, Campus Jourdan, 75014 Paris
HARRINGTON JOE (Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania) : *Cost Coordination
Abstract
When firms engage in price discrimination under competition, they can face a trade-off when choosing to collude. In order to maintain price discrimination, upper-level executives may have to involve those lower-level employees with the demand information needed to tailor prices to markets and customers. However, that comes with an enhanced risk of the cartel's discovery. Alternatively, those executives could centralize pricing authority and coordinate on a more uniform price but that means foregoing some of the profits from price discrimination. Here we put forth a third option which is for upper-level executives to coordinate on inflating the cost used in pricing by lower-level employees. Coordinating cost reports is shown to be more profitable than coordinating prices when market heterogeneity is sufficiently great or firms' products are sufficiently differentiated. Recent cartel episodes in which executives coordinated list prices or surcharges are explained to have some of the crucial features of this collusive scheme.
Monday 22 May 2023 17:00-18:15
Salle R1-09, Campus Jourdan, 75014 Paris
KELLNER Christian (University of Southampton) : *Timing decisions under model uncertainty
Sarah Auster
Abstract
We study the effect of ambiguity on timing decisions. An agent faces a stopping problem with an uncertain stopping payoff and a stochastic deadline. The agent is unsure about the correct model quantifying the uncertainty and seeks to maximize her payoff guarantee over all plausible models. If model uncertainty only concerns the deadline, the DM optimally stops as soon as this is optimal under one of the models. If there is also uncertainty about the stopping payoff, the DM often has incentives to continue at the point in time where she originally intends to stop. To prevent this from happening, a forward-looking agent may then opt to stop prematurely.
Monday 15 May 2023 17:00-18:15
Salle R1-09, Campus Jourdan, 75014 Paris
MARIOTTI Thomas (TSE) : *Keeping the Agents in the Dark: Private Disclosures in Competing Mechanisms
Andrea Attar, Eloisa Campioni, and Alessandro Pavan
Abstract
We study the design of market information in games in which several principals contract with several privately informed agents. We investigate a new dimension of these games, namely, the possibility for the principals to asymmetrically inform the agents about how their mechanisms respond to their messages. We document two effects of such private disclosures. First, they raise the principals' individual payoff guarantees, protecting them against their competitors' threats. Second, by enlarging the set of incentive-compatible correlation patterns between the principals' decisions and the agents' types, they can be used to support equilibrium outcomes and payoffs that cannot be supported in their absence, no matter how rich the message spaces are allowed to be. These results challenge the folk theorems à la Yamashita (2010) and the canonicity of the universal mechanisms of Epstein and Peters (1999), calling for a novel approach to the analysis of these games. The one proposed here retains various elements of standard mechanism design theory while accommodating for competition in mechanisms and private disclosures.
Monday 3 April 2023 17:00-18:15
Salle R1-09, Campus Jourdan, 75014 Paris
GOTTLIEB Daniel (London School of Economics) : *Market Power and Insurance Coverage
Abstract
We study how market power affects insurance policies in a general class of models. We show that exclusion is a robust feature of insurance with a monopolistic firm (or when firms have enough market power), but not with perfect competition. However, the reduction in coverage relative to competitive markets is not uniform. While monopolists under-provide coverage for individuals with low willingness to pay, competitive markets under-provide coverage for those with a high willingness to pay to avoid cream skimming by competitors. The welfare comparison between perfectly competitive and monopolistic markets depends on whether the distortion at the extensive margin (higher under monopoly) exceeds the distortion at the intensive margin (higher under competition for those with a high willingness to pay). Using simulations based on an empirical model of preferences, we find that those both of these effects are quantitatively important.
Monday 27 March 2023 17:00-18:15
Salle R1-09, Campus Jourdan, 75014 Paris
MORRIS Stephen (MIT) : *Screening with Persuasion joint with Dirk Bergemann and Tibor Heumann
Abstract
We consider a general nonlinear pricing environment with private information. The seller can control both the signal that the buyers receive about their value and the selling mechanism. We characterize the optimal menu and information structure that jointly maximize the seller's profits. The optimal screening mechanism has finitely many items even with a continuum of values. We identify sufficient conditions under which the optimal mechanism has a single item. Thus the seller decreases the variety of items below the efficient level as a by-product of reducing the information rents of the buyer.
Monday 20 March 2023 17:00-18:15
Salle R1-09, Campus Jourdan, 75014 Paris
JULLIEN Bruno (Toulouse School of Economics) : *Communication, Feedback and Repeated Moral Hazard with Short-lived Buyers joint with In-Uck Park (Bristol University)
Abstract
We show that experience good sellers facing myopic buyers can solve the inherent moral hazard problem by communicating their observation of quality before trade, provided that communication is part of their public track record. Such cheap-talk communication, if trusted, allows market prices to reflect the actual value created, thus providing an immediate reward for the seller’s effort which complements the conventional, reputational incentives. We characterize the conditions for communication to improve efficiency–which requires the moral hazard problem to be acute enough and the seller’s information to be precise enough–and the extent to which it does so.
Monday 13 March 2023 17:00-18:15
Salle R1-09, Campus Jourdan, 75014 Paris
PAVAN Alessandro (Northwestern University) : *Knowing your Lemon before you Dump It - by Alessandro Pavan and Jean Tirole
Abstract
In many games of interest (e.g., trade, entry, leadership, warfare, and partnership environments), one player (the leader) covertly acquires information about the state of Nature before choosing whether to engage with another player (the follower). The friendliness of the follower’s reaction depends on his beliefs about what motivated the leader’s choice to engage. We provide necessary and sufficient conditions for the leader’s value of acquiring more information to increase with the follower’s expectations. We then derive the economic implications of this characterization, focusing on three closely related topics (cognitive traps, disclosure, and cognitive styles), drawing policy implications. Keywords: Adverse selection, expectation conformity, generalized lemons problem, endogenous information, cognitive traps.
Monday 6 March 2023 17:00-18:15
Salle R1-09, Campus Jourdan, 75014 Paris
BROOKS Benjamin (Department of Economics, University of Chicago) : *On the Structure of Informationally Robust Optimal Mechanisms
Abstract
We study the design of optimal mechanisms when the designer is uncertain about the information held by the agents and about which equilibrium will be played. The guarantee of a mechanism is the minimum of the designer's welfare across all information structures and equilibria. The potential of an information structure is the maximum welfare across all mechanisms and equilibria. We formulate a pair of linear programs that upper bound the maximum guarantee across all mechanisms and lower bound the minimum potential across all information structures. In applications to public goods, bilateral trade, and optimal auctions, we use the bounding programs to characterize guarantee-maximizing mechanisms and potential-minimizing information structures and show that the max guarantee is equal to the min potential.
Monday 12 December 2022 17:00-18:15
Salle R1-09, Campus Jourdan, 75014 Paris
FENG Tangren (Bocconi) : *Interim Strategy-Proof Mechanisms: Designing Simple Mechanisms in Complex Environments.
Abstract
We study interim strategy-proof (ISP) Mechanisms with interdependent values: It requires that truth-telling is an interim dominant strategy for each agent, i.e., conditional on an agent’s own private information, the truth-telling maximizes her interim expected payoff for all possible strategies the other agents could use. We provide full characterizations of ISP mechanisms in two classical settings: single unit auctions and binary collective decision-makings. Our results highlight the tension between informational externalies and strategic externalites when designing ISP mechanisms.
Thursday 8 December 2022 12:30-13:30
Salle R1-14, Campus Jourdan, 75014 Paris
ROESLER Anne-Kathrin (University of Toronto) : *How informed do you want your principal to be? joint with Rahul Deb and Mallesh Pai
Abstract
presentation joint with Seminar TOM A buyer's value for a good depends on his private type and the quality that is unknown to him. The seller of the good learns about the quality via a signal; the signal realization is the seller's private information. We pose and answer the following question: how much (if any) private information would the buyer want the seller to have? Formally, we characterize the buyer-optimal outcome: this is the signal and the corresponding seller-optimal equilibrium of the informed principal game that yield the highest consumer surplus. We show that there are conditions under which private information for the seller can lead both to greater profits and higher consumer surplus; that is, compared to being uninformed, seller private information can lead to Pareto gains. The seller's signal in the buyer optimal outcome is typically not fully informative.
Monday 5 December 2022 17:00-18:15
Campus Jourdan R1-09
DUARTE Goncalves (University College London) : *
Monday 28 November 2022 17:00-18:15
Salle R1-09, Campus Jourdan, 75014 Paris
FRICK Mira (Yale) : *"Welfare Comparisons for Biased Learning" (with Ryota Iijima and Yuhta Ishii)
Abstract
We study robust welfare comparisons of learning biases, i.e., deviations from correct Bayesian updating. Given a true signal distribution, we deem one bias more harmful than another if it yields lower objective expected payoffs in all decision problems. We characterize this ranking in static (one signal) and dynamic (many signals) settings. While the static characterization compares posteriors signal-by-signal, the dynamic characterization employs an “efficiency index” quantifying the speed of belief convergence. Our results yield welfare-founded quantifications of the severity of well-documented biases. Moreover, the static and dynamic rankings can disagree, and “smaller” biases can be worse in dynamic settings.
Monday 21 November 2022 17:00-18:15
Salle R1-09, Campus Jourdan, 75014 Paris
DENTI Tommaso (Cornell University) : *"Blackwell correlated equilibrium" (joint with D. Ravid)
Abstract
We develop a method for making robust predictions in games with flexible information acquisition (i.e., rational inattention, Sims 2003). In games with exogenous information, one can describe the set of attainable outcomes using the Bayes correlated equilibrium (BCE) concept (Bergemann and Morris 2016). We introduce a refinement of BCE, Blackwell correlated equilibrium (BKE), and prove that it spans all outcomes attainable under some flexible learning technology whose costs increase in Blackwell's (1951,1953) information order. We show the BKE set is either dense or nowhere dense in the BCE set, with the former being true for generic games. We also characterize the set of outcomes attainable under almost-free learning. We conclude by exploring the implications of BKE on a Bertrand competition game, where we show the best BCE for consumers may not be approximable by BKEs.
Monday 14 November 2022 17:00-18:15
Salle R1-09, Campus Jourdan, 75014 Paris
STRULOVICI Bruno (Northwestern University) : *Social Learning by Truth-Insensitive Investigators
Abstract
In order to function, society relies on many facts that must be learned through intermediaries with special expertise or access to information. This paper considers whether society can learn about such facts when intermediaries do not care intrinsically about the truth and act sequentially. The answer depends on the severity of information attrition affecting the amount of discoverable evidence about each fact. Information attrition is nonexistent in fields based on reproducible scientific evidence but can affect the evidence in criminal and corruption investigations. Applications to institution enforcement, social cohesion, scientific progress, and historical revisionism are discussed.
Monday 24 October 2022 17:00-18:15
Salle R1-09, Campus Jourdan, 75014 Paris
DENICOLO Vincenzo (Bocconi) : *Acquisitions, innovation and the entrenchment of monopoly”. Below is the abstract. I also attach a copy of the paper (which is co-authored with Michele Polo).
Abstract
We analyze a dynamic model of repeated innovation where inventors may either be acquired by an incumbent or else resist takeover and challenge for leadership. In the short run, acquisitions always spur innovation because of the invention-for-buyout effect. In the longer run, however, they may stifle it because of a countervailing effect, the entrenchment of monopoly. The latter occurs when the incumbent's dominance depends on past levels of activity and is therefore reinforced by recurrent acquisitions. We show that if the entrenchment effect is sufficiently strong, forward-looking policymakers should prohibit acquisitions in anticipation of the long-run negative impact on innovation. This argument sets out a new theory of harm that can be used to block acquisitions that could otherwise go unchallenged.
Monday 17 October 2022 17:00-18:15
Salle R1-09, Campus Jourdan, 75014 Paris
KNOEPFLE Jan (QMUL) : *Should the Timing of Inspections be Random ?
Abstract
A principal provides funding for a long-term project that culminates in a success or a failure. Arrival rates of success and failure are governed by an agent's hidden actions: diverting the funds for private benefit increases the likelihood of failure; investing the funds increases the likelihood of success. The principal learns about past actions by performing costly inspections. We show that the form of the optimal timing of inspections depends only on the relative sensitivity of success and failure rates to the agent's investment choice. When investment primarily generates success, the inspection dates are predictable. When investment primarily prevents failure, the optimal timing of inspections is random.
Monday 10 October 2022 17:00-18:15
Salle R1-09, Campus Jourdan, 75014 Paris
HE Junnan (Sciences Po) : *Learning from Viral Content - (with Krishna Dasaratha)
Abstract
We study learning on social media using an equilibrium model where users interact with shared news stories. Rational users arrive sequentially and each observes an original story (i.e., a private signal) and a sample of predecessors' stories in a news feed, then decides which stories to share. Sampled news stories depend on what predecessors share as well as the sampling algorithm, which represents a design choice of the platform. We focus on how much the algorithm relies on virality (how many times a story has been previously shared) when generating news feeds. Showing users more viral stories can increase information aggregation, but can also generate steady states where most shared stories are wrong. Such misleading steady states self-perpetuate, as users who observe these wrong stories develop wrong beliefs, and thus rationally continue to share them. Moreover, these bad steady states appear discontinuously.
Monday 3 October 2022 17:00-18:15
Salle R1-09, Campus Jourdan, 75014 Paris
BUISSERET Peter (Department of Government, Harvard University) : Politics Transformed? Electoral Strategies under Ranked Choice Voting
Abstract
We analyze a model of multi-candidate elections under plurality rule versus ranked choice voting (RCV). Candidates choose platforms either to target their core supporters, or instead to appeal to undecided voters. We present two main results. First, RCV intensifies candidates’ incentives to target their core supporters rather than pursue a broad policy appeal. Second, we unearth circumstances in which RCV increases the probability that a Condorcet loser wins the election. Our findings contradict widely-held contentions about RCV’s benefits, relative to plurality rule elections.
Monday 26 September 2022 17:00-18:15
Salle R1-09, Campus Jourdan, 75014 Paris
WEIBULL Jorgen (Toulouse School of Economics) : A framework for spatial political analysis
Abstract
In order to understand current political events in democracies, it appears that the multi-dimensionality of political ideology is important. Political candidates and parties differ not only in the traditional left-right dimension, but also concerning environmental issues, migration, gender roles, international relations, law and order, defense, etc. In addition, an arguably important phenomenon in democracies is abstention from voting because of alienation. We here propose a framework for the analysis of political competition, political power, and coalition formation, in a multi-dimensional setting with consideration of abstention. Our approach combines elements from three separate literatures: (A) models of spatial political competition (pioneered by Davis and Hinich, 1966, 1967), (B) a spatial power index suggested by Lloyd Shapley in a RAND memorandum (Shapley, 1977), and (C) concepts and results in geometry concerning medians in multi-dimensional spaces (Durocher and Kirkpatrick, 2009). We illustrate the framework by applying it to data for the recently elected Swedish parliament (“riksdag”).
Monday 19 September 2022 17:00-18:15
Salle R1-09, Campus Jourdan, 75014 Paris
SPIEGLER Rani (Berglas School of Economics, Tel Aviv University) : *False Narratives and Political Mobilization" (joint with Kfir Eliaz and Simone Galperti)
Abstract
We present an equilibrium model of politics in which political platforms compete over public opinion. A platform consists of a policy, a coalition of social groups with diverse intrinsic attitudes to policies, and a narrative. We conceptualize narratives as subjective models that attribute a commonly valued outcome to (potentially spurious) postulated causes. When quantified against empirical observations, these models generate a shared belief among coalition members over the outcome as a function of its postulated causes. The intensity of this belief and the members' intrinsic attitudes to the policy determine the strength of the coalition's mobilization. Only platforms that generate maximal mobilization prevail in equilibrium. Our equilibrium characterization demonstrates how false narratives can be detrimental for the common good, and how political fragmentation leads to their proliferation. The false narratives that emerge in equilibrium attribute good outcomes to the exclusion of social groups from ruling coalitions.
Monday 12 September 2022 17:00-18:15
Salle R1-09, Campus Jourdan, 75014 Paris
KAMENICA Emir (Chicago Booth, School of Business) : *Comparisons of Signals (joint with Ben Brooks and Alex Frankel)
Abstract
A (Blackwell) experiment specifies the joint distribution of truth and the data generated by the experiment. A signal specifies the joint distribution of truth, the data generated by the signal, and the data generated by any other signal. Defining two experiments does not determine their joint informational content; defining two signals does. Blackwell (1953) studied (equivalent) comparisons of experiments; he characterized when one experiment is more valuable than another regardless of the preferences of the decision maker. We study (various, non-equivalent) comparisons of signals; among other comparisons, we characterize when one signal is more valuable than another regardless of the preferences of the decision maker and regardless of what other information the decision maker may have.
Monday 27 June 2022 17:00-18:15
Salle R2-20 Campus Jourdan 75014 Paris
CHE Yeon-Koo (Columbia University) : Prolonged Learning and Hasty Stopping: the Wald Problem with Ambiguity
with Sarah Auster and Konrad Mierendorff
Monday 20 June 2022 17:00-18:15
Salle R2-20, Campus Jourdan 75014 Paris
STEWART Colin (University of Toronto) : Demand in the Dark
Abstract
A growing body of evidence suggests that consumers are not fully informed about prices, contrary to a critical assumption of classical consumer theory. We analyze a model in which consumer types can vary in both their preferences and their information about prices. Given data on demand and the distribution of prices, we identify the set of possible values of the consumer surplus. Each surplus in this set can be rationalized with simple information structures and preferences. We also show how to narrow down the set of values using richer datasets and provide bounds on counterfactual demands at perfectly observed prices.
Monday 13 June 2022 17:00-18:15
Salle R1-14, Campus Jourdan 75014 Paris
ELLIOTT Robert (Burmingham) : Market segmentation through information
A. Galeotti, A. Koh and Wenhao Li
Monday 30 May 2022 17:00-18:15
Salle R1.09 - Campus Jourdan 75014 Paris
YANG Li (PSE) : A Theory of Ex Post Rationalization
Mohammad Akbarpour, Scott Kominers, Paul Milgrom
Abstract
Human beings attempt to rationalize their past choices, even those that were mistakes in hindsight. We propose a formal theory of this behavior. The theory predicts that agents commit the sunk-cost fallacy. Its model primitives are identified by choice behavior and it yields tractable comparative statics.
Monday 23 May 2022 17:00-18:15
Salle R2.21 - Campus Jourdan 75014 Paris
KONDOR Peter (LSE) : Cleansing by Tight Credit: Rational Cycles and Endogenous Lending Standards
Maryam Farboodi
Abstract
Endogenous cycles emerge through the two-way interaction between lending standards and production fundamentals. When lenders choose credit quantity over quality, the resulting lax lending standards lead to low interest rates and high output growth but the deterioration of future loan quality. When the quality is suciently low, lenders switch to tight standards, causing high credit spreads and low growth but a gradual improvement in the quality of loans. This eventually triggers a shift back to a boom with lax lending, and the cycle continues. As such, credit standards play a dual role. If they help the economy through promoting loan quantity today, they hurt future loan quality, and vice-versa. Investors don't internalize either role, thus, the constraint ecient economy features both a static and a dynamic externality, and albeit often being cyclical, it diers from the decentralized equilibrium.
Full text [pdf]
Monday 16 May 2022 17:00-18:15
Salle R1.09 - Campus Jourdan 75014 Paris
STRULOVICI Bruno (Northwestern University) : Can Society Function Without Ethical Agents? An Informational Perspective
Abstract
In order to function, society relies on many facts that must be learned through intermediaries with special expertise or access to information. This paper considers whether society can learn about such facts when intermediaries are devoid of ethical motives and act sequentially. The answer depends on the severity of information attrition affecting the amount of discoverable evidence about each fact. Information attrition is nonexistent in fields based on reproducible scientific evidence but can affect the evidence in criminal and corruption investigations. Applications to institution enforcement, social cohesion, scientific progress, and historical revisionism are discussed.
Monday 9 May 2022 17:00-18:15
Salle R2.01 - Campus Jourdan 75014 Paris
FRIEDMAN Evan (PSE) : Quantal Response Equilibrium with Symmetry: Representation and Applications
Felix Mauersberger
Abstract
We study an axiomatic variant of quantal response equilibrium (QRE) for normal form games that augments the regularity axioms (Goeree et al., 2005) with various forms of “symmetry” across players and actions. The model refines regular QRE, implies bounds on logit QRE, and is tractable in many applications. The main result is a representation theorem that characterizes the model’s set-valued predictions by taking unions and intersections of simple sets. We completely characterize the predictions for (almost) all 2 ? 2 games, a corollary of which is to show, in coordination games, which Nash equilibrium is selected by the principal branch of the logit correspondence. As applications, we consider three classic games: public goods provision with heterogenous costs of participation, jury voting with unanimity, and the infinitely repeated prisoner’s dilemma. For each, we characterize all equilibria within a particular large class. An analysis of existing experimental data shows the potential, and limitations, of the model.
Monday 11 April 2022 17:00-18:15
Salle R2.01 - Campus Jourdan 75014 Paris
STEWART Colin (University of Toronto) : Demand in the Dark CANCELLED
joint with Pavel Kocourek and Jakub Steiner
Abstract
A growing body of evidence suggests that consumers are not fully informed about prices, contrary to a critical assumption of classical consumer theory. We analyze a model in which consumer types can vary in both their preferences and their information about prices. Given data on demand and the distribution of prices, we identify the set of possible values of the consumer surplus. Each surplus in this set can be rationalized with simple information structures and preferences. We also show how to narrow down the set of values using richer datasets and provide bounds on counterfactual demands at perfectly observed prices.
Full text [pdf]
Monday 4 April 2022 17:00-18:15
Salle R2.01 - Campus Jourdan 75014 Paris
CHADE Hector (Arizona State University) : Multidimensional Screening and Menu Design in Health Insurance Markets
Abstract
We study a general model of a health insurance market with multidimensional consumer heterogeneity and moral hazard. Consumers have private information about their risk aversion, taste for healthcare utilization, and distribution over health states. After choosing an insurance contract and privately observing their health state, they choose how much healthcare to utilize. We consider the menu design problem facing an insurer that can offer vertically differentiated contracts and can set premiums. Our framework permits a flexible insurer objective function, encompassing the problems of both a social planner and monopolist. We show that optimal menus satisfy intuitive optimality conditions that subsume several cases in the literature. Moreover, we show that the problem where the insurer can choose from a continuum of contracts can be well-approximated by the problem with a finite set of contracts. We implement the framework numerically given empirical distributions of consumer risks and preferences. Simulations illustrate the differential incentives of a monopolist and a social planner, and shed light on optimal regulation of a monopoly insurer. We highlight that strategic insurer behavior presents unique challenges not present in perfectly competitive markets.
Monday 28 March 2022 17:00-18:15
Salle R2.01 - Campus Jourdan 75014 Paris
GOLUB Ben (Northwestern University) : Taxes and Market Power: A Network Approach
Andrea Galeotti, Benjamin Golub, Sanjeev Goyal, Eduard Talamas, Omer Tamuz
Abstract
Suppliers of differentiated goods make simultaneous pricing decisions, which are strategically linked. Because of market power, the equilibrium is inefficient. We study how a policymaker should target a budget-balanced tax-and-subsidy policy to increase welfare. A key tool is a certain basis for the goods space, determined by the network of interactions among suppliers. It consists of eigenbundles---orthogonal in the sense that a tax on any eigenbundle passes through only to its own price---with pass-through coefficients determined by associated eigenvalues. Our basis permits a simple characterization of optimal interventions. A planner maximizing consumer surplus should tax eigenbundles with low pass-through and subsidize ones with high pass-through. The Pigouvian leverage of the system---the gain in consumer surplus achievable by an optimal tax scheme---depends only on the dispersion of the eigenvalues of the matrix of strategic interactions. We interpret these results in terms of the network structure of the market.
Monday 21 March 2022
Salle R2.21 - Campus Jourdan 75014 Paris
LIANG Annie (Northwestern University) : Algorithmic Design: Fairness Versus Accuracy
joint with Jay Lu and Xiaosheng Mu
Abstract
Algorithms are increasingly used to guide consequential decisions, such as who should be granted bail or be approved for a loan. Motivated by growing empirical evidence, regulators are concerned about the possibility that the errors of these algorithms differ sharply across subgroups of the population. What are the tradeoffs between accuracy and fairness, and how do these tradeoffs depend on the inputs to the algorithm? We propose a model in which a designer chooses an algorithm that maps observed inputs into decisions, and introduce a fairness-accuracy Pareto frontier. We identify how the algorithm's inputs govern the shape of this frontier, showing (for example) that access to group identity reduces the error for the worse-off group everywhere along the frontier. We then apply these results to study an ``input-design" problem where the designer controls the algorithm's inputs (for example, by legally banning an input), but the algorithm itself is chosen by another agent. We show that: (1) all designers strictly prefer to allow group identity if and only if the algorithm's other inputs satisfy a condition we call group-balance; (2) all designers strictly prefer to allow any input (including potentially biased inputs such as test scores) so long as group identity is permitted as an input, but may prefer to ban it when group identity is not.
Monday 14 March 2022 17:00-18:15
Salle R1.09 - Campus Jourdan 75014 Paris
CURELLO Gregorio (U of Bonn ) : Incentives for Collective Innovation
Monday 7 March 2022 17:00-18:15
Salle R1.09 - Campus Jourdan 75014 Paris
ARNOSTI Nick (University of Michigan) : *
Monday 13 December 2021 17:00-18:15
R1-09 Campus Jourdan 75014 Paris
*
Monday 6 December 2021 17:00-18:15
Online
GARRETT Dan (University of Essex) : Relational Contracts: Public versus Private Savings
Francesc DILME
Abstract
We study relational contracting with an agent who has consumption-smoothing preferences as well as the ability to save to defer consumption (or to borrow). Our focus is the comparison of principal-optimal relational contracts in two settings. The first where the agent’s consumption and savings decisions are private, and the second here these decisions are publicly observed. In the first case, the agent smooths his consumption over time, the agent’s effort and payments eventually decrease with time, and the balances on his savings account eventually increase. In the second, the agent consumes earlier than he would like, consumption and the balance on savings fall over time, and effort and payments to the agent increase. There is convergence to efficiency in the long run. Our results suggest a possible explanation for low savings rates in certain industries where compensation often comes in the form of discretionary payments.
Full text [pdf]
Monday 29 November 2021 17:00-18:15
On line
YAMASHITA Takuro (TSE) : A Mediator Approach to Mechanism Design with Limited Commitment
Niccolo Lomys
Abstract
We study the role of information structures in mechanism design problems with limited commitment. In each period, a principal offers a “spot” contract to a privately informed agent without committing to future spot contracts, and the agent responds to the contract. In contrast to the classical approach in which the information structure is fixed, we allow for all admissible information structures. We represent the information structure as a fictitious mediator and re-interpret the model as a mechanism design problem by the mediator with commitment. The mediator collects the agent’s private information and then, in each period, privately recommends the principal’s spot contract and the agent’s response in an incentive-compatible manner (both in truth-telling and obedi ence). We provide several examples to identify why new equilibrium outcomes can arise once we allow for general information structures. We next develop a durable-good monopoly application. We show that trading outcomes and wel fare consequences can substantially differ from those in the classical model with a fixed information structure. In the seller-optimal mechanism, the seller offers a discounted price to the high-valuation buyer only in the initial period, followed by the high, surplus-extracting price until some endogenous deadline, when the buyer’s information is revealed and hence fully extracted. As a result, the Coase conjecture fails: even in the limiting case of perfect patience, the seller makes a positive surplus, and the trading outcome is not the first best. We also charac terize mediated and unmediated implementation of the seller-optimal outcome.
Monday 22 November 2021 17:00-18:15
R1-09 Campus Jourdan 75014 Paris
STRAUSZ Roland (Humboldt University Berlin) : Principled Mechanism Design with Evidence
Monday 15 November 2021 17:00-18:15
R1-09 Campus Jourdan 75014 Paris
GALEOTTI Andrea (LSE) : Market segmentation through information
Abstract
An information designer has precise information about consumers' preferences over products sold by oligopolists. The designer chooses what information to reveal to competing, differentiated firms who, then, compete on price. We ask what market outcomes the designer can achieve. The information designer is a metaphor for an internet platform who collects data about users and sells it to firms who can, in turn, target discounts and promotions towards different consumers. Our analysis provides new benchmarks demonstrating the power that users' data can endow internet platforms with. These benchmarks speak directly to current regulatory debates.
Monday 8 November 2021 17:00-18:15
Salle R1-09 - Campus Jourdan - 75014 PARIS
POGGI Francisco (University of Mannheim) : A Taxation Principle with Non-Contractible Events
STRULOVICI Bruno
Abstract
The Taxation Principle says that, under certain conditions, using a “tax” mechanism is without loss of optimality. The taxation principle requires that actions are observable, all outcomes are contractible, and utility is quasilinear. This is not a useful result to study for example the design of liability rules reckless behaviour is only observed if an accident happens. We generalise the Taxation Principle for settings where actions are imperfectly observable, not all outcomes are contractible (meaning that the principal can “tax” the agent only after certain events occur), and agents don’t necessarily have quasilinear utilities. We apply this new Taxation Principle to the problem of designing liability rules when firms with private information about product’s riskiness acquire more information before launching a new product to the market.
Monday 18 October 2021 17:00-18:15
Salle R1-09 - Campus Jourdan - 75014 PARIS
ZAPECHELNYUK Andriy (University of St Andrews) : A Model of Debates: Moderation vs Free Speech
Abstract
This paper provides a framework to study communication conflicts, such as political debates, using a novel model of competition in Bayesian persuasion. Debating parties can frame their arguments for maximal impact. They also can spam the discussion to distract the audience from the opponent’s arguments. We find that spamming is more detrimental than framing. Truth discovery requires moderation by restricting on the number of arguments that parties can make. When the parties are allowed to speak freely, spamming can kill truth discovery and make communication completely uninformative. By contrast, framing is disciplined by competition. If the conflict between the parties is strong and the number of arguments is restricted, the parties reveal the truth.
Full text [pdf]
Monday 11 October 2021 17:00-18:15
Salle R2-21 - Campus Jourdan - 75014 PARIS
ELY Jeff (Northwestern) : Ruth, Anthony, and Clarence
Monday 4 October 2021 17:00-18:15
Salle R2-21 - Campus Jourdan - 75014 PARIS
SINANDER Ludvig (Oxford) : Agenda-manipulation in ranking
Abstract
A committee ranks a set of alternatives by sequentially voting on pairs, in an order chosen by the committee’s chair. Although the chair has no knowledge of voters’ preferences, we show that she can do as well as if she had perfect information. We characterise strategies with this ‘regret-freeness’ property in two ways: (1) they are efficient, and (2) they avoid two intuitive errors. One regret-free strategy is a sorting algorithm called insertion sort. We show that it is characterised by a lexicographic property, and is outcome-equivalent to a recursive variant of the much-studied amendment procedure.
Full text [pdf]
Monday 27 September 2021 17:00-18:15
Salle R1-09 - Campus Jourdan - 75014 PARIS
NEEMAN Zvika (Tel Aviv University) : Communication with Endogenous Deception Costs
Ran Eilat (BGU)
Abstract
We study how the suspicion that communicated information might be deceptive affects the nature of what can be communicated in a sender-receiver game. Sender is said to \emph{deceive} Receiver if she sends a message that induces beliefs that are different from those that should have been induced in the realized state. Deception is costly to Sender and the cost is endogenous: it is increasing in the distance between the induced beliefs and the beliefs that should have been induced. A message function that induces Sender to engage in deception is said to be non-credible and cannot be part of an equilibrium. We study credible communication in the frameworks of \cite{crawford_sobel_1982} and \cite{kamenica_bayesian_2011}. The cost of deception parametrizes the sender's ability to commit to her strategy. Through varying this cost, our model spans the range from cheap talk, or no commitment, to full commitment
Monday 20 September 2021 17:00-18:15
Salle R1-09 - Campus Jourdan - 75014 PARIS
ONUCHIC Paula (Oxford) : Signaling and Discrimination in Collaborative Projects
RAY Debraj
Abstract
We propose a model of collaborative work in pairs. Each potential partner draws an idea from a distribution that depends on their unobserved ability. The partners then choose to combine their ideas, or work separately. These decisions are based on the intrinsic value of their projects, but also on signaling payoffs, which depend on the public’s assessment of individual contributions to joint work. In equilibrium, collaboration strategies both justify and are justified by public assessments. When partners are symmetric, equilibria with symmetric collaborative strategies are often fragile, in a sense made precise in the paper. In such cases, asymmetric equilibria exist: upon observing a collaborative outcome, the public ascribes higher credit to one of the partners based on payoff-irrelevant “identities.” Such favored identities do receive a higher payoff relative to their disfavored counterparts conditional on collaborating, but may receive lower overall expected payoff. Finally, we study a policy that sometimes (but not always) clarifies the ordinal ranking of partners’ contributions, and find that such disclosures can be Pareto-improving and reduce the scope for discrimination across payoff-irrelevant identities.
Full text [pdf]
Monday 13 September 2021 17:00-18:15
Salle R1-09 - Campus Jourdan - 75014 PARIS
AKBARPOUR Mohammad (Stanford) : Investment Incentives in Near-Optimal Mechanisms
DUKE KOMINERS Scott ; LI Shengwu ; MILGROM Paul ¶
Abstract
In many real-world resource allocation problems, optimization is computationally intractable, so any practical allocation mechanism must be based on an approximation algorithm. We study investment incentives in strategy-proof mechanisms that use such approximations. In sharp contrast with the Vickrey-Clark-Groves mechanism, for which individual returns on investments are aligned with social welfare, we find that some algorithms that approximate efficient allocation arbitrarily well can nevertheless create misaligned investment incentives that lead to arbitrarily bad overall outcomes. However, if a near-efficient algorithm “excludes bossy negative externalities,” then its outcomes remain near-efficient even after accounting for investments. A weakening of this “XBONE” condition is necessary and sufficient for the result.
Monday 21 June 2021 17:00-18:00
ANNULE
NEEMAN Zvika (Tel Aviv University) : Communication with Endogenous Deception Costs
Co-author: Ran Eilat
Abstract
We study how the suspicion that communicated information might be deceptive affects the nature of what can be communicated in a sender-receiver game. Sender is said to deceive Receiver if she sends a message that induces beliefs that are different from those that should have been induced in the realized state. Deception is costly to Sender and the cost is endogenous: it is increasing in the distance between the induced beliefs and the beliefs that should have been induced. A message function that induces Sender to engage in deception is said to be non-credible and cannot be part of an equilibrium. We study credible communication in the frameworks of Crawford & Sobel (1982) and Kamenica & Gentzkow (2011). The cost of deception parametrizes the sender's ability to commit to her strategy. Through varying the cost of deception, we can expand the range of the model from cheap talk, or no commitment, to full commitment.
Full text [pdf]
Monday 14 June 2021 17:00-18:00
online
DOVAL Laura (Columbia University) : Optimal mechanism for the sale of a durable good
Co-author: Vasiliki Skreta
Abstract
A buyer wishes to purchase a durable good from a seller who in each period chooses a mechanism under limited commitment. The buyer’s valuation is binary and fully persistent. We show that posted prices implement all equilibrium outcomes of an infinite-horizon, mechanism selection game. Despite being able to choose mechanisms, the seller can do no better and no worse than if he chose prices in each period, so that he is subject to Coase’s conjecture. Our analysis marries insights from information and mechanism design with those from the literature on durable goods. We do so by relying on the revelation principle in Doval and Skreta (2020).
Full text [pdf]
Monday 7 June 2021 17:00-18:00
online
BONATTI Alessandro (MIT Sloan) : The Economics of Social Data
Co-authors: Dirk Bergemann, Tan Gan
Abstract
We propose a model of data intermediation to analyze the incentives for sharing individual data in the presence of informational externalities. A data intermediary acquires signals from individual consumers regarding their preferences. The intermediary resells the information in a product market wherein firms and consumers can tailor their choices to the demand data. The social dimension of the individual data---whereby an individual's data are predictive of the behavior of others---generates a data externality that can reduce the intermediary's cost of acquiring the information. We derive the intermediary's optimal data policy and establish that it preserves the privacy of consumer identities while providing precise information about market demand to the firms. This policy enables the intermediary to capture the total value of the information as the number of consumers becomes large.
Full text [pdf]
Monday 31 May 2021 17:00-18:00
online
HAYASHI Takashi (University of Glasgow) : Social discount rate: spaces for agreement
Co-author: MIchele Lombardi
Abstract
We study the problem of aggregating discounted utility preferences into a social discounted utility preference model. We use an axiom capturing a social responsibility of individuals' attitudes to time, called consensus Pareto. We show that this axiom can provide consistent foundations for welfare judgments. Moreover, in conjunction with the standard axioms of anonymity and continuity, consensus Pareto can help adjudicate some fundamental issues related to the choice of the social discount rate: the society selects the rate through a generalized median voter scheme.
Full text [pdf]
Monday 17 May 2021 17:00-18:00
online
MADSEN Erik (NYU) : Incentive Design for Talent Discovery
Co-authors : Basil Williams, Andrzej Skrzypacz
Abstract
In many organizations, employees enjoy significant discretion regarding project selection. If projects differ in their informativeness about an employee’s quality, project choices will be distorted whenever career concerns are important. We analyze a model in which an organization can shape its employees’ career concerns by committing to a system for allocating a limited set of promotions. We show that the organization optimally overpromotes certain categories of underperforming employees, trading off efficient matching of employees to promotions in return for superior project selection. When organizations can additionally pay monetary bonuses, we find that overpromotion is a superior incentive tool when the organization needs to offer high-powered incentives; otherwise, bonuses perform better.
Full text [pdf]
Monday 10 May 2021 17:00-18:00
online
BARDHI Arjada (Duke University) : Local Evidence and Diversity in Minipublics
Co-author: Nina Bobkova
Abstract
We study optimal minipublic design with endogenous evidence. A policymaker selects a group of citizens—a minipublic—for advice on the desirability of a policy. Citizens can discover local evidence but might be deterred by uncertainty about the policymaker’s adoption standard. We show that such uncertainty can be detrimental to evidence discovery even with costless evidence, civic-minded citizens, and ex ante aligned players. Evidence discovery is hardest to sustain under moderate uncertainty. The optimal minipublic has low diversity: it overrepresents citizens around the median citizen and underrepresents those at the margins. Our findings bear implications for the French Citizens’ Convention on Climate.
Full text [pdf]
Monday 3 May 2021 17:00-18:00
online
NIKOLOWA Radoslawa (QMUL) : Corporate Capture of Blockchain Governance
Co-authors: Daniel Ferreira, Jin Li
Abstract
We develop a theory of blockchain governance. In our model, the proof-of-work system, which is the most common set of rules for validating transactions in blockchains, creates an industrial ecosystem with specialized suppliers of goods and services. We analyze the interactions between blockchain governance and the market structure of the industries in the blockchain ecosystem. Our main result is that the proof-of-work system leads to a situation where a large firm captures the governance of the blockchain.
Full text [pdf]
Monday 12 April 2021 17:00-18:00
online
BERGSTROM Ted (UCSB) : Condorcet winners despite extremist preferences
Abstract
It is well-known that if voters' preference profiles are single-peaked, then pairwise voting among several candidates will result in a Condorcet winner, who can not be defeated by any other candidate. This paper exploits a simple idea to identify a larger class of preference profiles for which there is a Condorcet winner. We observe that if two voters have opposite preferences about every pair of candidates, then the results of majority voting will be unchanged if neither of their votes is counted. We define a reduced form preference ordering as one in which for each pair of opposite preferences, the number of votes for the candidate having fewer voters is set to zero and the number of votes for the opposite candidate is reduced by the number of votes for its opposite. When there are 3 candidates, this operation reduces the number of individual preference orderings in the preference profile from 6 to 3, but preserves the outcome of all pairwise contests. We show that with three candidates, voting has a Condorcet winner if and only if either the reduced form preference profile is single peaked or more than half of the voters in the reduced form share the same preference ordering. This assumption is much weaker than the assumption that the original preference ordering is single-peaked. It will be satisfied if there is a right left positional ordering such that center-left preferences outnumber right-leaning extremists and center-right preferences outnumber left-leaning extremists. The use of reduced preference profiles allows for more easily proved and more sharply stated versions of standard results. It also allows a clearer explanation of the relation between voting ties and the incentive compatibility of sincere voting.
Monday 29 March 2021 17:00-18:00
online
MARGARIA Chiara (Boston University) : Exit Dilemma: The Role of Private Learning on Firm Survival
Doruk Cetemen
Abstract
We study exit decisions of duopolists from a stochastically declining market. Over time, firms privately learn about market conditions from observing the stochastic arrival of customers. Exit decisions are publicly observed; thus the model features both observational and private learning. We assume that a larger firm is more likely to have customers and hence has better information about market conditions than does a smaller rival. We provide sufficient conditions for either the smaller or the larger firm to be the first to exit the market in the unique equilibrium. Because of observational learning, exiting may be a firm's dominant action since continuing operation would bring too much of a good news to the rival, leading it to further postpone its exit. Uniqueness then follows from iterated conditional dominance.
Full text [pdf]
Monday 22 March 2021 17:00-18:00
online
ALI Nageeb (Penn State) : Reselling Information
Abstract
Information is replicable in that it can be simultaneously consumed and sold to others. We study how resale affects a decentralized market for information. We show that even if the initial seller is an informational monopolist, she captures non-trivial rents from at most a single buyer: her payoffs converge to 0 as soon as a single buyer has bought information. By contrast, if the seller can also sell valueless tokens, there exists a “prepay equilibrium” where payment is extracted from all buyers before the information good is released. By exploiting resale possibilities, this prepay equilibrium gives the seller as high a payoff as she would achieve if resale were prohibited.
Monday 15 March 2021 17:00-18:00
online
PATHAK Parag (MIT) : Worth the Trip? Effects of School Transportation in Boston and New York
Abstract
The question of who attends school where has long been in the public eye, nowhere more so than Boston and New York City. School assignment in these districts came to national attention in the 1960s and 70s in the wake of court-mandated busing for racial balance. In Boston and New York today, centralized assignment with district-wide choice allows students to enroll far from home, perhaps enhancing integration. Urban school transportation is extraordinarily costly, however, and the social and educational consequences of this expenditure unclear. This paper estimates school distance and travel time effects using an identification strategy that exploits the Boston and New York City school matches. Instrumental variables estimates that exploit centralized assignment show that longer travel times indeed increase student exposure to other racial groups, especially for black students. But the same empirical strategy suggests that more distant enrollment does little to boost student achievement, high school graduation rates, or college enrollment. A shift towards assignment rules favoring walkable schools therefore seems unlikely to affect educational outcomes.
Monday 8 March 2021 17:00-18:00
online
GREEN Brett (WUSTL) : Due Diligence
Abstract
Due diligence is common practice prior to the execution of corporate or real estate transactions. We propose a model of the due diligence process and analyze its effect on prices, efficiency, and the division of surplus. In our model, if the seller accepts an offer, the acquirer has the right to gather information and chooses when to execute the transaction. Our main result is that the acquirer engages in “too much” due diligence relative to the social optimum. Nevertheless, allowing for due diligence can improve both total surplus and the seller’s payoff compared to a setting with no due diligence. The optimal contract involves both a price contingent on execution and a non-contingent transfer, resembling features such as earnest money or break-up fees that are commonly observed in practice.
Full text [pdf]
Monday 14 December 2020 17:00-18:00
online
RENOU Ludovic (QMUL) : When are dynamic choices consistent with learning from common information?
Abstract
A researcher observes a sequence of choices made by multiple agents in a binary-state, binary-action environment. Agents differ in terms of their initial prior beliefs about the unknown state, their preferences or both, but update beliefs based on common information in each time period. The state evolves according to a commonly known stochastic process and we separately examine the cases where the state is time-invariant and time-varying. We characterize the set of choices that are consistent with some preferences, priors, common information and stochastic process for the state. We apply our results to committee voting where they imply that the heterogeneity of voters in their bias versus their ideology can lead to very different sets of voting patterns.
Monday 7 December 2020 17:00-18:00
online
YODER Nathan (University of Georgia) : Information Design for Differential Privacy
Ian Schmutte
Abstract
Firms and statistical agencies that publish aggregate data face practical and legal requirements to protect the privacy of individuals. Increasingly, these organizations meet these standards by using publication mechanisms which satisfy differential privacy. We consider the problem of choosing such a mechanism so as to maximize the value of its output to end users. We show that this is equivalent to a constrained information design problem, and characterize its solution. Moreover, we use a novel result on the comparison of information structures to show that the simple geometric mechanism is optimal whenever data users face monotone decision problems.
Monday 30 November 2020 17:00-18:00
online
CARROLL Gabriel (Stanford University) : Dynamic Incentives in Incompletely Specified Environments
Abstract
Consider a repeated interaction where it is unknown which of various stage games will be played each period. This framework captures the logic of intertemporal incentives even though numeric payoffs to any strategy profile are indeterminate. A natural solution concept is ex post perfect equilibrium (XPE): strategies must form a subgame-perfect equilibrium for any realization of the sequence of stage games. When (i) there is one long-run player and others are short-run, and (ii) public randomization is available, we can adapt the standard recursive approach to determine the maximum sustainable gap between reward and punishment. This leads to an explicit characterization of what outcomes are supportable in equilibrium, and an optimal penal code that supports them. Any non-XPE-supportable outcome fails to be an SPE outcome for some (possibly ambiguous) specification of the stage games. Unlike in standard repeated games, restrictions (i) and (ii) are crucial.
Full text [pdf]
Monday 23 November 2020 17:00-18:00
online
MEYER Meg (Oxford) : Choosing Joint Distributions: Theory and Application to Information Design
Abstract
In many economic settings, a decision-maker chooses a joint distribution of random variables (X1,…,Xn) to maximize the expected value of an objective function V(X1,…,Xn), taking the marginal distributions of the Xi’s as given. Problems of the above form arise in optimal transport, where the marginal distributions reflect resource constraints; in multi-product design, where the marginal distributions reflect buyers’ valuations for each separate variety of product; and in information design, where the marginal distributions reflect characteristics of receivers. In models of information design where a sender communicates privately with multiple receivers, the sender’s strategic problem is the choice of a joint distribution of signals to the receivers, conditional on each state of the world. In some settings, the sender’s problem decouples: the optimal marginal distribution of the signal to each receiver, in each state, depends only on that receiver’s characteristics, and the optimal joint distribution can then be determined, taking the marginal distributions as given. The first part of this paper derives three stochastic dominance theorems showing how the solution to a decision-maker’s problem of the form above depends on the properties of the objective function and the characteristics of the given marginal distributions. Specifically, it examines the impact of greater “heterogeneity” within the set of marginal distributions, providing three distinct generalizations of the majorization ordering of dispersion to capture heterogeneity among sets of univariate distributions. For each definition of greater heterogeneity of the given marginal distributions, the corresponding stochastic dominance theorem identifies a class of objective functions for which greater heterogeneity is sufficient to guarantee a lower maximized expected payoff for the decision-maker, for any objective in that class. Two of the three theorems also demonstrate that greater heterogeneity of the marginals according to the corresponding definition is necessary for the conclusion above. The second part of the paper applies these stochastic dominance theorems to a family of multireceiver models of private Bayesian persuasion. I derive new characterizations of feasible and optimal signal structures and new comparative statics results.
Monday 16 November 2020 17:00-18:00
online
KATTWINKEL Deniz (University College London ) : Probabilistic Verification in Mechanism Design
Ian Ball
Abstract
We introduce a model of probabilistic verification into the standard mechanism design setting. The principal verifies the agent's type using a statistical test. The result of the test is stochastic; its distribution depends on the agent's true type. The principal commits to a mechanism that assigns a test to each message and then a decision based on the test result. In our framework, the revelation principle holds. We characterize whether each type can be identified with a test. If so, the principal's problem becomes an optimization subject to incentive constraints. Under quasilinear preferences, we solve for revenue-maximizing mechanisms by introducing a new expression for the virtual value that reflects the precision of the tests.
Full text [pdf]
Monday 9 November 2020 17:00-18:00
online
LIU Qingmin (Michigan State university) : Strategic Exploration: Preemption and Prioritization
Yu Fu Wong
Abstract
This paper provides a model of strategic exploration in which two competing players simultaneously explore a set of alternatives over time to study search dynamics, payoff divisions, and distributions of discovery time. The strategic tension is between preemption, i.e., the incentive to explore alternatives before the opponent explores them in future, and prioritization, i.e., the incentive to explore alternatives with the highest success probabilities. When players are symmetric in their speed of exploration, each player randomizes to level his opponent’s posterior belief down, making greedy strategies best responses. In the asymmetric case, the weak player’s strategy is greedy, but the strong player randomizes over alternatives with different posteriors and captures a share of payoff disproportionately larger than his share of exploration capacity. The weak player conducts extensive instead of intensive exploration, i.e., he covers many alternatives as the strong player does but never explores any alternative with cumulative probability one. The overall discovery time decreases in asymmetry in the first-order stochastic dominance sense.
Monday 12 October 2020 17:00-18:00
online
DORON Ravid (University of Chicago) : Persuasion via Weak Institutions
Elliot Lipnowski and Denis Shishkin
Abstract
A sender commissions a study to persuade a receiver, but influences the report with some state-dependent probability. We show that increasing this probability can benefit the receiver and can lead to a discontinuous drop in the sender's payoffs. We also examine a public-persuasion setting, where we show the sender especially prefers her report to be immune to influence in bad states. To derive our results, we geometrically characterize the sender's highest equilibrium payoff, which is based on the concave envelope of her capped value function.
Full text [pdf]
Monday 5 October 2020 17:00-18:00
https://zoom.us/j/92600440081?pwd=NEN5RlBFQ1pWWlhQc2c5VHRabUllZz09
ALGER Ingela (TSE) : Homo Moralis goes to the voting booth
Jean-François Laslier
Abstract
The paper reviews the implications of evolutionary Kantian morality for three classical problems in the theory of voting: the divided majority problem, the costly participation dilemma, and the strategic revelation of information.
Monday 28 September 2020 17:00-18:30
online
VOHRA Rakesh (University of Pennsylvania) : Instability of Centralized Markets
Ahmad Peivandi
Abstract
Centralized markets reduce search for buyers and sellers. Their ‘thickness’ increases the chance of order execution at nearly competitive prices. In spite of the incentives to consolidate, some markets, securities markets and on-line advertising being the most notable, are fragmented into multiple trading venues. We argue that fragmentation is an inevitable feature of any centralized market except in special circumstances.
Full text [pdf]
Monday 21 September 2020 17:00-18:30
online
CHASSANG Sylvain (Princeton) : Making the Most of Limited Government Capacity
Lucia Del Carpio (INSEAD), Sam Kapon (NYU)
Monday 14 September 2020 17:00-18:30
online
KARTIK Navin (Columbia University) : Improving Information from Manipulable Data
Alex Frankel
Abstract
Data-based decisionmaking must account for the manipulation of data by agents who are aware of how decisions are being made and want to affect their allocations. We study a framework in which, due to such manipulation, data becomes less informative when decisions depend more strongly on data. We formalize why and how a decisionmaker should commit to underutilizing data. Doing so attenuates information loss and thereby improves allocation accuracy.
Full text [pdf]
Monday 15 June 2020 17:00-18:30
salle R2-20, campus Jourdan - 75014 Paris
NIKOLOWA Radoslawa (QMUL) : *
Monday 8 June 2020 17:00-18:30
salle R1-09, campus Jourdan - 75014 Paris
MATHEVET Laurent (New York University) : *
Monday 25 May 2020 17:00-18:30
salle R1-09, campus Jourdan - 75014 Paris
NEEMAN Zvika (Tel Aviv University) : ANNULE
Monday 18 May 2020 17:00-18:30
salle R1-09, campus Jourdan - 75014 Paris
YANG Li (PSE) : *
Monday 11 May 2020 17:00-18:30
salle R1-09, campus Jourdan - 75014 Paris
TAKASHI Hayashi (University of Glasgow) : *
Monday 27 April 2020 17:00-18:30
salle R1-09, campus Jourdan - 75014 Paris
CARROLL Gabriel (Stanford University) : *
Monday 30 March 2020 17:00-18:30
salle R1-09, campus Jourdan - 75014 Paris
RENOU Ludovic (QMUL) : ANNULE
Monday 23 March 2020 17:00-18:30
salle R2-21, campus Jourdan - 75014 Paris
PATHAK Parag (MIT) : ANNULE
Monday 16 March 2020 17:00-18:30
salle R2-21, campus Jourdan - 75014 Paris
DOVAL Laura (Columbia University) : ANNULE - Optimal Mechanism for the sale of a durable good
Vasiliki Skreta
Abstract
We show that posted prices are the optimal mechanism to sell a durable good to a privately informed buyer when the seller has limited commitment in an infinite horizon setting. We provide a methodology for mechanism design with limited commitment and transferable utility. Whereas in the case of commitment, subject to the buyer's truthtelling and participation constraints, the seller's problem is a decision problem, in the case of limited commitment, the seller's problem corresponds to an intrapersonal game, where different “incarnations of the seller represent the different beliefs he may have about the buyer's valuation.
Full text [pdf]
Monday 9 March 2020 17:00-18:30
salle R2-21, campus Jourdan - 75014 Paris
RAPPOPORT Daniel (Chicago Booth) : Evidence and Skepticism in verifiable disclosure games
Abstract
A key feature of communication with evidence is skepticism: to the extent possible, a receiver will attribute any incomplete disclosure to the sender concealing unfavorable evidence. The degree of skepticism depends on how much evidence the sender is expected to possess. I characterize when a change in the prior distribution of evidence induces more skepticism, i.e. induces any receiver to take an equilibrium action that is less favorable to the sender following every message. I formalize an increase in the sender’s (ex-ante) amount of evidence and show that this is equivalent to inducing more skepticism. As an input to this result, I fully characterize receiver optimal equilibrium outcomes in general verifiable disclosure games. I apply these results to a dynamic disclosure problem in which the sender obtains and discloses evidence over time. I identify the necessary and sufficient condition on the evidence structure such that the receiver cannot benefit from early inspections.
Full text [pdf]
Monday 2 March 2020 17:00-18:30
salle R2-21, campus Jourdan - 75014 Paris
VIGIER Adrien (Oslo Business school) : Who Acquires Information in Dealer Markets?
Jesper Rüdiger
Abstract
We study information acquisition in dealer markets. We first identify a one-sided strategic complementarity in information acquisition: the more informed traders are, the larger market makers' gain from becoming informed. When quotes are observable, this effect in turn induces a strategic complementarity in information acquisition amongst market makers. We then derive the equilibrium pattern of information acquisition and examine the implications of our analysis for market liquidity and price discovery. We show that increasing the cost of information can decrease market liquidity and improve price discovery.
Full text [pdf]
Monday 24 February 2020 17:00-18:30
salle R2-21, campus Jourdan - 75014 Paris
SMOLIN Alex (TSE) : Disclosure and Pricing of Attributes
Abstract
A monopolist sells an object characterized by multiple attributes. A buyer can be one of many types, differing in their willingness to pay for each attribute. The seller can disclose to the buyer arbitrary attribute information in the form of a statistical experiment. The seller decides how to price the object, what information to disclose, and how to price access to the information. To screen different types, the seller offers a menu of options that specify information prices, experiments, and object prices. I characterize revenue-maximizing menus. If all types value the same attribute, then the seller cannot benefit from information disclosure and price discrimination. More generally, if each type values a single attribute and attributes are independent, then the seller can benefit from information disclosure but not from price discrimination. In other cases, a discriminatory menu can be profitable; however, optimal experiments always belong to a tractable class of linear disclosure policies. The analysis informs the operation of various intermediaries including business brokers and online recruiting platforms.
Full text [pdf]
Monday 6 January 2020 17:00-18:30
salle R1-09, campus Jourdan - 75014 Paris
PARK In-Uck (University of Bristol) : Towards a Simple Model of Continuous-Time Games
Siyang Xiong
Monday 16 December 2019 17:00-18:30
salle R1-09, campus Jourdan - 75014 Paris
STRACK Philipp (Yale University) : The Cost of Information
Luciano Pomatto, Omer Tamuz
Abstract
We develop an axiomatic theory of information acquisition that captures the ideaof constant marginal costs in information production: the cost of generating twoindependent signals is the sum of their costs, and generating a signal with probabilityhalf costs half its original cost. Together with a monotonicity and a continuityconditions, these axioms determine the cost of a signal up to a vector of parameters.These parameters have a clear economic interpretation and determine the difficultyof distinguishing states. We argue that this cost function is a versatile modeling toolthat leads to more realistic predictions than mutual information.
Full text [pdf]
Monday 9 December 2019 17:00-18:30
salle R2-21, campus Jourdan - 75014 Paris
WOLTON Stephane (LSE) : A Political Economy of Social Discrimination
Torun Dewan
Abstract
From burqa ban to minaret ban, from right to detain suspected illegal immigrants to restricting the help to migrants, the number of social laws specifically targeting a tiny proportion of citizens has raised in recent years across Western democracies. These symbolic policies, we show, are far from being innocuous: they can have far reaching consequences for large parts of the population. By raising the salience of certain social traits (e.g., Muslim identity) these laws can create a labour market loaded in favor of the majority (e.g., the non-Muslims), yielding higher unemployment rates and spells for minority citizens. These deleterious effects arise even absent any form of bias against, or uncertainty about, minority workers. Instead they are fully driven by social expectations about behavior and are best understood as a form of social discrimination. Importantly, we establish conditions under which a plurality of the citizenry demands the implementation of symbolic policies anticipating their labor market consequences. We further highlight that the implementation of symbolic policies is always associated with less redistribution and can be coupled with lower tax rates. We discuss several policy recommendations to limit the possibility of social discrimination arising.
Full text [pdf]
Monday 2 December 2019 17:00-18:30
salle R2-21, campus Jourdan - 75014 Paris
PYCIA Marek (University Zurich) : Evaluating with Statistics: Which Outcome Measures Differentiate Among Matching Mechanisms?
Abstract
The selection of mechanisms to allocate school seats in public school districts can be highly contentious. At the same time the standard statistics of student outcomes calculated from districts’ data are very similar for many mechanisms. This paper contributes to the debate on mechanism selection by explaining the similarity puzzle as being driven by the invariance properties of the standard outcome statistics: outcome measures are approximately similar if and only if they are approximately anonymous.
Full text [pdf]
Monday 25 November 2019 17:00-18:30
salle R2-21, campus Jourdan - 75014 Paris
ASHLAGI Itai (Stanford University) : Improving efficiency in kidney exchange
Market Failure in Kidney Exchange, with Nikhil Agarwal, Eduardo Azevedo, Clayton Featherstong, Omer Karduman and Scrip Systems with Minimal Availability, with Suleyman Kerimov (in progress)
Abstract
We find that kidney exchange markets suffer from market failures whose remedy could increase transplants by 30%-63%. We document that the market is fragmented and inefficient: most transplants are arranged by hospitals instead of national platforms. We propose a model to show two sources of inefficiency: hospitals only partly internalize their patients' benefits from exchange, and current platforms sub-optimally reward hospitals for submitting patients and donors. We propose a scrip system to eliminate free-riding of hospitals, which will eliminate some of the inefficiency in the market. To understand how a scrip system will behave in practice, we study a stylized dynamic “exchanging favors” model that captures special features of kidney exchange. Each period one agent requests service, one agent provides service, and the service requester pays a scrip to the service provider. We analyze the scrip distribution under the assumption that, for each service request, only few agents are able to provide the requested service. We identify conditions, under which the scrip distribution is stable in the sense that agents do not deviate much from their initial endowment with high probability. The results hint that scrip systems will result in better outcomes for kidney exchange platforms, where free riding is ubiquitous.
Full text [pdf]
Monday 18 November 2019 17:00-18:30
salle R2-21, campus Jourdan - 75014 Paris
ROSTEK Marzena (University of Wisconsin Madison) : Exchange Design and Efficiency
Abstract
In many markets, traders’ demands for an asset are contingent on the price of that asset alone rather than on the price of all assets they trade. We present a model based on the uniform-price double auction which accommodates arbitrary restrictions on cross-asset conditioning, including asset-by-asset market clearing (demand for each asset is conditioned on the price of that asset) and a single market clearing (demand for each asset is conditioned on the prices of all assets). If suitably designed, markets with limited demand conditioning are at least as efficient as a single market clearing for all traders and assets.
Monday 4 November 2019 17:00-18:30
salle R1-09, campus Jourdan - 75014 Paris
SZENTES Balazs (LSE) : Learning Before Trading: On the Inefficiency of Ignoring Free Information
Doron Ravid, Anne-Katrin Roesler
Abstract
This paper analyzes a bilateral trade model where the buyer's valuation for the object is uncertain and she can privately purchase any signal about her valuation. The seller makes a take-it-or-leave-it offer to the buyer. The cost of a signal is smooth and increasing in informativeness. We characterize the set of equilibria when learning is free and show that they are strongly Pareto ranked. Our main result is that, when learning is costly but the cost of information goes to zero, equilibria converge to the worst free-learning equilibrium.
Full text [pdf]
Monday 14 October 2019 17:00-18:30
salle R1-09, campus Jourdan - 75014 Paris
PUPPE Clemens (Karlsruhe Institute for Technology) : Resource Allocation by Frugal Majority Rule
Klaus Nehrig
Abstract
We propose a model of ‘frugal aggregation’ in which the evaluation of social welfare must be based on information about agents’ top choices plus general qualitative background conditions on preferences. The former is elicited individually, while the latter is not. We apply this model to problems of public budget allocation, relying on the specific assumption of separable and convex preferences. We propose and analyze a particularly aggregation rule called ‘Frugal Majority Rule.’ It is defined in terms of a suitably localized net majority relation. This relation is shown to be consistent, i.e. acyclic and decisive; its maxima minimize the sum of the natural resource distances to the individual tops. As a consequence of this result, we argue that the Condorcet and Borda perspectives – which conflict in the standard, ordinal setting – converge here. The second main result provides a crisp algorithmic characterization that renders the Frugal Majority Rule analytically tractable and efficiently computable.
Full text [pdf]
Monday 7 October 2019 17:00-18:30
salle R2-21, campus Jourdan - 75014 Paris
PEREGO Jacopo (Columbia) : Belief Meddling in Social Networks: an Information-Design Approach
Simone Galperti
Abstract
Social media have become an increasingly important source of information about political, social and economic issues. While beneficial on many levels, the decentralized nature of these media may expose societies to novel risks of manipulation by third parties. To evaluate these risks, we study a model where a designer sends information to agents who interact in a game, so as to affect its outcome. The designer can communicate only with a limited number of agents, who then share information with each other on a network of social links before playing the game. We characterize the equilibrium outcomes that can be induced by seeding this social network with information. Our main result recasts this constrained information-design problem in terms of an equivalent linear program, which is particularly useful for applications. We show that a simple property of the network---the depth of communication---fully determines the scope for belief manipulation. Finally, we illustrate how a holistic use of linear-programming duality helps to characterize the solution to the optimal seeding problem. Our theory offers insights into the design of advertisement and political campaigns that are robust to (or leverage on) information spillovers.
Full text [pdf]
Monday 30 September 2019 17:00-18:30
salle R1-09, campus Jourdan - 75014 Paris
SQUINTANI Francesco (University of Warwick) : Information Transmission in Political Networks
Abstract
Motivated by political economy applications such as networks of policy-makers, interest groups, or judges, I formulate and study a model of information transmission in networks of ideologically differentiated agents. When all agents’ ideologies are sufficiently diverse, the optimal network is the line in which the agents are ordered according to their ideologies. When agents are partitioned in ideologically diverse clusters, each composed of agents with similar views, it is optimal for all agents that the clusters organize as factions: stars whose only links are with ideologically close clusters through star centers (the faction leaders). Such optimal networks obtain as Nash equilibria of a game in which each link requires sponsorship by both connected agents, and are the unique strongly pairwise stable networks. These results suggest positive and normative rationales for “horizontal” links between like-minded agents in political networks, as opposed to hierarchical networks such as the star, that have been shown to prevail in organizations where agents’ preferences are more closely aligned.
Full text [pdf]
Monday 23 September 2019 17:00-18:30
salle R1-09, campus Jourdan - 75014 Paris
HE Yinghua (Rice U) : Leveraging Uncertainties to Infer Preferences: Robust Analysis of School Choice with Lotteries
Yeon-Koo Che, Dong Woo Hahm
Abstract
Recent evidence suggests that market participants make mistakes (even) in a strategically straightforward environment but seldom with significant payoff consequences. Uncertainties arising from the use of lotteries or other sources increase payoff consequences of certain mistakes, and force participants to take care to avoid them. Consequently, uncertainties limit the extent to which certain mistakes are made, thus making it possible for one to infer some preference relations reliably. We propose a novel method of exploiting the uncertainties present in a matching environment to systematically and robustly infer student preferences over schools based on their rank-order lists data. Our method consists of three steps: (i) simulating the underlying structure of uncertainties present in the environment, (ii) extracting preference relations revealed under the simulated uncertainties, and then (iii) extending the revealed preference relations via the axiom of transitivity. Depending on the type of uncertainties present, the method rationalizes a variety of procedures, ranging from truthful-reporting assumption at one extreme (full-support uncertainty) to the stability assumption at the other extreme (when there is little uncertainty). Further, we refine our method to strengthen the robustness of the revealed preferences in the presence of participants making even some payoff-relevant mistakes, and explore ways to optimally balance the tradeoff between robustness and efficiency in preference estimation. We apply our methods to estimate student preferences through a Monte Carlo analysis capturing canonical school choice environment with single tie-breaking lotteries. Finally, we apply our methods as well as other existing methods to New York City high school assignment data to explore their implications for preference estimation and counterfactual analysis under a possible policy intervention.
Monday 16 September 2019 17:00-18:30
salle R1-09, campus Jourdan - 75014 Paris
HE Junnan (Sciences Po) : Rational Contextual Choices under Imperfect Perception of Attributes
Abstract
The classical rational choice theory proposes that preferences are context-independent, e.g. independent of irrelevant alternatives. Empirical choice data, however, display several contextual choice effects that seem inconsistent with rational preferences. We study a choice model with a fixed underlying utility function and explain contextual choices with novel information friction: the agent’s perception of the options is affected by an attribute-specific noise. Under this friction, the agent learns useful information when she sees more options. Therefore, the agent chooses contextually, exhibiting intransitivity, joint-separate evaluation reversal, attraction effect, compromise effect, similarity effect, and phantom decoy effect. Nonetheless, because the noise is attribute-specific and common across alternatives, the agent’s choice is perfectly rational whenever an option clearly dominates others.
Full text [pdf]
Friday 23 August 2019 17:00-18:30
salle R1-09, campus Jourdan - 75014 Paris
BENHENDA ASMA Yinghua (Rice U) : *
Monday 3 June 2019 17:00-18:30
Salle R1-09, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris
MURTO Pauli (Aalto University) : Endogenous Learning from Incremental Actions
Julia Salmi and Tuomas Laiho
Abstract
We study an experimentation problem where actions today have a long-lasting impact on information generation in the future. Actions are irreversible and generate information gradually over time. We solve for the optimal path of actions when the decision maker does not know the payoff-relevant state of the world. Because current choices have persistent effects, the problem has two state variables: a summary of past actions and the current belief on the state of the world. There is a novel informational trade-off as acting today speeds up information generation but postponing actions results in more informed choices. Our two leading examples cover the monopoly pricing of durable goods with social learning and capacity expansion in a market with uncertain optimal size. We show that since the monopolist can internalize future benefits from learning, the monopolist’s optimal solution may result in a higher social surplus than the competitive market in both examples.
Full text [pdf]
Monday 27 May 2019 17:00-18:30
Salle R1-09, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris
EKMEKCI Mehmet (Boston College) : Reputation and Screening in a Noisy Environment with Irreversible Actions
Lucas Maestri
Abstract
We introduce a class of two-player dynamic games to study the effectiveness of screening in a principal-agent problem. In every period, the principal chooses either to irreversibly stop the game, or to continue. In every period until the game is stopped, the agent chooses an action that affects the flow payoffs to the players. The agent’s type is his private information, and his actions are imperfectly observed. Players receive a lump-sum payoff when the game stops, and the principal’s payoff depends on the agent’s type. Both players are long-lived and share a common discount factor. We study the limit of the equilibrium outcomes as both players get arbitrarily patient. We show that Nash equilibrium outcomes of the dynamic game converge to the unique Nash equilibrium outcome of an auxiliary two-stage game with observed mixed actions. Hence, dynamic screening eliminates noise in monitoring, but beyond that, it is ineffective. We calculate the probability that the principal eventually stops the game, against each type of the agent. The principal learns some but not all information about the agent’s type. All payoff relevant information is revealed at the beginning of the game. Applications include procurement, promotions and demotions within organizations and venture-capital financing.
Monday 20 May 2019 17:00-18:30
Salle R1-09, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris
PEREZ CASTRILLO David (Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona ) : Conflict-free and Pareto-optimal Allocations in the One-sided Assignment Game: A Solution Concept Weaker than the Core
Marilda Sotomayor
Abstract
In the one-sided assignment game any two agents can form a partnership and decide how to share the surplus created. Thus, in this market, an outcome involves a matching and a vector of payoffs. Contrary to the two-sided assignment game, stable outcomes often fail to exist in the one-sided assignment game. We introduce the idea of conflict-free outcomes: they are individually rational outcomes where no matched agent can form a blocking pair with any other agent, neither matched nor unmatched. We propose the set of Pareto-optimal (PO) conflict-free outcomes, which is the set of the maximal elements of the set of conflict-free outcomes, as a natural solution concept for this game. We prove several properties of conflict-free outcomes and PO conflict-free outcomes. In particular, we show that each element in the set of PO conflict-free payoffs provides the maximum surplus out of the set of conflict-free payoffs, the set is always non-empty and it coincides with the core when the core is non-empty. We further support the set of PO conflict-free outcomes as a natural solution concept by suggesting an idealized partnership formation process that leads to these outcomes. In this process, partnerships are formed sequentially under the premise of optimal behavior and two agents only reach an agreement if both believe that more favorable terms will not be obtained in any future negotiations.
Full text [pdf]
Monday 13 May 2019 17:00-18:30
Salle R1-09, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris
LOEPER Antoine (UC3M) : Policy responsiveness versus stability: the role of institutions
Wiola Dziuda
Abstract
Institutions with checks and balances (e.g., supermajority requirements, bicameralism, constitutional courts) are often celebrated for their effect on the stability and predictability of policies, which is desirable for economic prosperity. However, checks and balances may also prevent governments from adapting policies to a changing environment. An ideal political system should balance these competing concerns. To analyze the determinants of this trade-off, we build a parsimonious model of dynamic policy-making in which policy makers' preferences are subject to shocks, but policy change is inherently costly. Institutions are defined broadly as a mapping from current policies and power arrangement into future power arrangement. We show that the impact of institutions on policy change is exacerbated by the strategic response of the policy makers to the institution, which makes the comparison across institutions non-trivial. We characterize the optimal institution as a function of the primitives. Political turn-over make policies more unstable, but also makes policy makers vote in a more congruent way. Conversely, checks and balances make policies more unstable, but also make policy makers vote in a more polarized way. Checks and balances remain optimal when the policy makers' ideologies are sufficiently polarized.
Monday 6 May 2019 17:00-18:30
Salle R1-09, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris
WEBB Duncan (PSE) : Pairwise Normalization: A Neuroeconomic Theory of Multi-Attribute Choice
Peter Landry
Abstract
We present a theory of multi-attribute choice founded in the neuroscience of perception. According to our theory, valuation is formed through a series of pairwise, attribute-level comparisons implemented by (divisive) normalization — a normatively-grounded form of relative value coding observed across sensory modalities and in species ranging from honeybees to humans. As we demonstrate, “pairwise normalization” captures a broad range of behavioral regularities, including the compromise and asymmetric dominance effects, the diversification bias in allocation decisions, and majority-rule preference cycles (among several others). In binary choice, the model also offers a potential neurobiological foundation for Cobb-Douglas preferences and other classic microeconomic preference representations.
Full text [pdf]
Monday 15 April 2019 17:00-18:30
Salle R1-09, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris
RENY Philip (University of Chicago) : Conditional ?-Equilibria of Multi-Stage Games with Infinite Sets of Signals and Actions
Abstract
We extend Kreps and Wilson's concept of sequential equilibrium to games where the sets of actions that players can choose from and the sets of signals that players may observe are infinite. A strategy profile is a conditional ?-equilibrium if, for any player and for any of his positive probability signal events, the player's conditional expected utility is within ? of the best that the player can achieve by deviating. Perfect conditional ?-equilibria are defined by testing conditional ?-rationality also under nets of small perturbations of the players' strategies and of nature's probability function that can make any finite collection of signals outside a negligible set have positive probability. Every perfect conditional ?-equilibrium strategy profile is a subgame perfect ?-equilibrium, and, in finite games, limits of perfect conditional ?-equilibria as ??0 are sequential equilibrium strategy profiles. Because such limit strategies need not exist even in very "nice" infinite games, we consider instead their limit distributions over outcomes. We call such outcome distributions perfect conditional equilibrium distributions and establish their existence for a large class of regular projective games. Nature's perturbations can produce equilibria that seem unintuitive and so we consider two ways to limit the effects of those perturbations, using topologies on nature's states and on players' actions.
Monday 8 April 2019 17:00-18:30
R1-09, campus Jourdan - 75014 Paris
GOYAL Sanjeev (University of Cambridge) : Network Formation in Large Groups
Syngjoo Choi and Frédéric Moisan
Abstract
We conduct an experiment to understand the principles that govern network formation. The design of the experiment builds on a model of linking and efforts taken from Galeotti and Goyal [2010]. In order to reduce cognitive complexity facing human subjects and facilitate learning, we develop a new experimental platform that integrates a network visualization tool using an algorithm of Barnes and Hut [1986] with an interactive tool of asynchronous choices in continuous time. Our experiment provides strong support for macroscopic predictions of the theory: there is specialization in linking and efforts across all treatments. Moreover, and in line with the theory, the specialization is more pronounced in larger groups. Thus subjects abide by the law of the few. Information on payoffs provided to subjects affects their behavior and yields differential welfare consequences. In the treatment where subjects see only their own payoffs, in large groups, the most connected individuals compete fiercely they exert large efforts and have small earnings. By contrast, when a subject sees everyone's payoffs, in large groups, the most connected individuals engage in less intense competition they exert little effort and have large earnings. The effects of information are much more muted in small groups.
Full text [pdf]
Monday 1 April 2019 17:00-18:30
Salle R1-09, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris
HERRERA Helios (Warwick) : The Market for Product Reviews
Jacob Glazer and Motty Perry
Abstract
We propose a model of product reviews with honest and fake reviews in order to study the value of information provided on platforms like TripAdvisor, Yelp, etc. In every period, a review is posted which is either honest, i.e., it reveals the reviewer’s true experience with the product/service, or fake, i.e., it is fabricated in order to manipulate the public’s beliefs. We establish that the equilibrium is unique and derive a number of robust and interesting results. While fake agents are able to manipulate the public’s beliefs, aggregation of information takes place as long as some of the reviews are honest. We demonstrate that some of the mechanisms currently used to filter out fake reviews can be harmful.
Full text [pdf]
Monday 25 March 2019 17:00-18:30
Salle R1-09, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris
FRICK Mira (Yale) : Misinterpreting Others and the Fragility of Social Learning
Ryota lijima and Yuhta Ishii
Abstract
We study to what extent information aggregation in social learning environments is robust to slight misperceptions of others' characteristics (e.g., tastes or risk attitudes). We consider a population of agents who obtain information about the state of the world both from initial private signals and by observing a random sample of other agents' actions over time, where agents' actions depend not only on their beliefs about the state but also on their idiosyncratic types. When agents are correct about the type distribution in the population, they learn the true state in the long run. By contrast, our first main result shows that even arbitrarily small amounts of misperception can generate extreme breakdowns of information aggregation, where in the long run all agents incorrectly assign probability 1 to some fixed state of the world, regardless of the true underlying state. This stark discontinuous departure from the correctly specified benchmark motivates independent analysis of information aggregation under misperception. Our second main result shows that any misperception of the type distribution gives rise to a specific failure of information aggregation where agents' long-run beliefs and behavior vary only coarsely with the state, and we provide systematic predictions for how the nature of misperception shapes these coarse long-run outcomes. Finally, we show that how sensitive information aggregation is to misperception depends on how rich agents' payoff-relevant uncertainty is. A design implication is that information aggregation can be improved through interventions aimed at simplifying the agents' learning environment.
Full text [pdf]
Monday 18 March 2019 17:00-18:30
Salle R1-09, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris
FLECKINGER Pierre (Ecole des Mines de Paris) : The Incentive Properties of Collective Reputation
Wanda Mimra and Angelo Zago
Abstract
Collective Reputation is often viewed as creating free-riding and impeding quality provision. It is however a widespread and often deliberate choice of producers. We provide new explanations for this based on group incentives. Heterogeneous producers whose costs are imperfectly known need to provide effort to produce high quality. The demand side a priori does not observe the true quality, but high quality can be detected with some probability, reflecting e.g. expert inspections, awards, labeling and the regulatory framework. Unidentified products are otherwise pooled together according to the collective reputation structure, i.e. grouping of producers. In the unique equilibrium, each group is subject to internal free-riding by their higher-cost members. We find however that grouping producers can also increase incentives and yield higher quality and welfare than individual reputation, because free-riding under collective reputation might be less severe than own-reputation milking under individual reputations. We also show that admission thresholds with a small elite always improves upon full collective reputation. Despite potentially higher producers' surplus, any group with collective reputation however unravels in absence of transfers. Nevertheless, we exhibit simple type-independent and budget-balanced contracts under collective reputation that implement the first best.
Monday 11 March 2019 17:00-18:30
Salle R1-09, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris
EROL Selman (CMU) : Network Hazard and Bailouts
Abstract
This paper characterizes strongly stable networks under general threshold contagion. Among other applications, the theory is applied to interbank lending and financial contagion wherein a government can intervene to stop contagion. In the absence of intervention, banks form disjoined clusters to minimize contagion. In the presence of intervention, banks become less concerned with the counterparties of their counterparties, which we dub network hazard. Network hazard allows some banks to become systemically important and gives the network a core-periphery structure. The counterparty risk of a large part of the economy becomes correlated through the core banks’ solvency. Core banks serve as a buffer against contagion when solvent and an amplifier of contagion when insolvent. As such, bailouts create welfare volatility and increase systemic risk via network hazard. It is shown that network hazard is a novel force distinct from moral hazard. Results are historically relevant to the pyramiding of reserves and the establishment of the Federal Reserve.
Monday 18 February 2019 17:00-18:30
salle R1-09, campus Jourdan - 75014 Paris
CANTILLON Estelle (Université Libre de Bruxelles) : What is price discovery achieving in the New Zealand electricity market ?
Stefan Bergheimer
Abstract
Wholesale electricity markets solve a complex allocation problem: electricity is not storable, demand is uncertain, production is inelastic in the short run and can involve indivisibilities. The New Zealand wholesale electricity market attempts to solve this complex allocation problem by using a price and quantity discovery mechanism that ends one hour before dispatch. We show that while the existing mechanism may help deal with production efficiency, it facilitates the exertion of market power. We provide preliminary evidence about this tradeoff and document the role played by this price and quantity mechanism in this market.
Monday 11 February 2019 17:00-18:30
Salle R1-09, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris
LEVY John : Persuasion with correlation neglect
Ines Moreno de Barreda and Ronny Razin
Abstract
We consider an information design problem in which a sender tries to persuade a receiver that has correlation neglect, i.e., fails to understand that signals might be correlated. We show that the sender can change the expected posterior of the receiver in any direction. When the number of signals the sender can send is large, she can approach her first best utility. We characterize for which environments full correlation is the optimal solution; in these cases we can use a modified problem and standard concavification techniques. We show that full correlation is optimal in the familiar case of binary utilities but also more generally when utilities are super-modular and when the number of signals is large. However, in some environments full correlation is not optimal and in those cases the optimal solution involves negative correlation
Full text [pdf]
Monday 4 February 2019 17:00-18:30
Salle R1-09, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris
MENSCH Jeffrey (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem) : Rational Inattention and the Monotone Likelihood Ratio Property
Abstract
A commonly assumed feature of games with complementarities is that players have noisy signals of the underlying state of the world that are ordered by the monotone likelihood ratio property (MLRP). At the same time, a large literature has recently explored the behavior of rationally inattentive agents. I provide a connection between these two literatures, showing that a decision maker with payoffs that satisfy increasing differences (ID) will always acquire signals that are ordered by the MLRP if and only if he has attention costs proportional to entropy reduction. I extend this result to games, providing conditions under which players first acquire MLRP-ordered signals, and then choose higher actions given higher realizations of the signals. Applications are given to global games and independent private-value auctions.
Monday 28 January 2019 17:00-18:30
Salle R1-09, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris
AUSTEN-SMITH David (Northewestern University) : Optimal exploration
César Martinelli
Abstract
Consider a decision maker who has to choose one of several alternatives, and who is imperfectly informed about the payoff of each of them. In each period, the decision maker has to decide whether to stop and take one of the alternatives, or to continue researching the alternatives. New information is costly and is never conclusive. We provide a dynamic programming formulation of the decision maker’s problem with either a finite deadline or no deadline, and give necessary and sufficient conditions for research to take place for some prior beliefs about the alternatives. We show that, at least for short deadlines and situations in which there is a strictly positive probability the decision maker stops searching in the next period under the optimal plan, the decision maker either explores the best alternative and stops after good news, or explores the second best alternative and stops after bad news, with the former path being optimal if the decision maker is relatively optimistic about the payoff of the alternatives. On the other hand, an example shows that searching the third best alternative can be optimal when there are more than three remaining search periods and there is no likelihood of stopping in the next period.
Full text [pdf]
Monday 17 December 2018 17:00-18:30
salle R1-09, campus Jourdan - 75014 Paris
PESKI Marcin (University of Toronto) : Bargaining with Incomplete Information about Preferences
Abstract
We study a war-of-attrition bargaining over a pie with heterogeneous parts, where players have incomplete information over their opponent preferences as well as behavioral types. Before the war of attrition, players choose their bargaining demands. If the preference uncertainty has a full support and players demands are simple offers, then, in equilibrium, players divide each part of the pie equally. Next, we consider the case when each player may demand that the opponent chooses from a menu of allocations. In the on-sided incomplete information case, the player with known preferences proposes a menu of all allocations that give her at least a half of the value of the whole pie; such a menu is accepted. Finally, we show that the war of attrition game with two sided incomplete information may have multiple equilibria.
Monday 10 December 2018 17:00-18:30
salle R1-09, campus Jourdan - 75014 Paris
SANNIKOV Yully (Stanford Graduate School of Business) : Dynamic Trading: Price Inertia and Front-Running
Andy Skrzypacz
Abstract
We build a linear-quadratic model to analyze trading in a market with private information and heterogeneous agents. Agents receive private taste/inventory shocks and trade continuously. Agents differ in their need for trade as well as the cost to hold excessive inventory. In equilibrium, trade is gradual. Trading speed depends on the number and market power of participants, and trade among large market participants is slower than that among small ones. Price has momentum due to the actions of large traders: it drifts down if the sellers have greater market power than buyers, and vice versa. The model can also answer welfare questions, for example about the social costs and benefits of market consolidation. It can also be extended to allow private information about common value.
Full text [pdf]
Monday 3 December 2018 17:00-18:30
salle R1-09, campus Jourdan - 75014 Paris
SAHUGUET Nicolas (HEC Montréal) : On the Optimality of Closed Lists under Proportional Representation
Benoit Crutzen and Sabine Flamand
Abstract
A large number of democracies rely at least partially on closed-list proportional representation for their legislative elections. With closed lists, voters can only vote for a party, not candidates. The literature often associates closed lists with perverse incentives for individual candidates. We reconsider this argument in a model of a contest between teams for multiple individual prizes. We show that closed lists can actually maximize a party's electoral success. Our finding is robust to allowing for the introduction of biases in the contest due to voter ideological preferences, having more than two parties competing in the election, candidates also caring about their party winning a majority of legislative seats and allowing parties to offer lists with more candidates than the number of available prizes.
Monday 26 November 2018 17:00-18:30
Salle R1-09, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris
LIPNOVSKI Elliot (U. of Chicago) : Cheap Talk with Transparent Motives
Doron Ravid
Abstract
We study a model of cheap talk with one substantive assumption: the sender’s preferences are state-independent. We observe that this setting is amenable to the belief-based approach familiar from models of persuasion with commitment. Using this approach, we examine the possibility of valuable communication, assess the value of commitment, and explicitly solve for senderoptimal equilibria in a large class of examples. A key result is a geometric characterization of the value of cheap talk, described by the quasiconcave envelope of the sender’s value function. (JEL D83, D82, M37, D86, D72)
Monday 19 November 2018 17:00-18:30
Salle R1-09, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris
MOLDOVANU Benny (Bonn University) : Monotonic norms, orthogonality and incentive compatibility in multi-dimensional voting
Abstract
We study issue-by-issue voting and robust mechanism design in multi-dimensional frameworks where privately informed agents have preferences induced by general norms (distances). We uncover the deep connections between dominant strategy incentive compatibility (DIC) on the one hand, and several geometric/functional analytic concepts on the other. Our main results are: 1) Marginal medians are DIC if and only if they are calculated with respect to a basis such that the norm is orthant-monotonic in the associated coordinate system. 2) Equivalently, marginal medians are DIC if and only if they are computed with respect to coordinates determined by an Auerbach basis such that, for any vector in the basis, any linear combination of the other vectors is Birkhoff-James orthogonal to it. 3) We show how semi-inner products and normality provide an analytic method that can be used to compute all DIC marginal medians. 4) As an application, we derive all DIC marginal medians for lp spaces of any finite dimension, and show that they do not depend on p (unless p = 2).
Monday 12 November 2018 17:00-18:30
Salle R1-09, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris
BOUTON Laurent (Georgetown University) : Electoral Systems and Inequalities in Government Interventions
Abstract
This paper studies the political determinants of inequality in government interventions under the majoritarian and proportional representation systems. Using a model of electoral competition with targetable government intervention and heterogeneous localities, we uncover a novel relative electoral sensitivity effect in majoritarian systems. This effect, which depends on the geographic distribution of voters, can incentivize parties to allocate resources more equally under majoritarian systems than proportional representation systems. This contrasts with the conventional wisdom that government interventions are more unequal in majoritarian systems.
Full text [pdf]
Monday 5 November 2018 17:00-18:30
Salle R1-09, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris
LI Shengwu : Information order in monotone decision problems under uncertainty
Junjie Zhou
Abstract
This paper examines the robustness of Lehmann’s ranking of experiments (Lehmann, 1988) for decisionmakers who are uncertainty-averse à la Cerreia-Vioglio et al. (2011). Assuming commitment, the main result says for all uncertainty-averse indices satisfying some mild assumptions, Lehmann’s informativeness ranking is equivalent to the induced uncertainty-averse value ranking of experiments for all agents with single-crossing vNM utility indices. Our finding suggests that Lehmann’s ranking can be a useful enrichment of Blackwell’s ranking for monotone decision problems even if ambiguity is present.
Full text [pdf]
Monday 15 October 2018 17:00-18:30
Salle R1-09, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris
CRIPPS Martin (University College London ) : Divisible Updating
Abstract
A characterisation is provided of the belief updating processes that are independent of how an individual chooses to divide up/partition the statistical information they use in their updating. These \divisible updating processes are in general not Bayesian, but can be interpreted as a re-parameterisation of Bayesian updating. This class of rules incorporates over- and under-reaction to new information in the updating and other biases. We also show that a martingale property is, then, sufficient the updating process to be Bayesian. Very Preliminary!!
Monday 8 October 2018 17:00-18:30
Salle R1-09, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris
SADLER Evan (Harvard) : Social Learning, False Information, and Influence Campaigns
Abstract
In a model of social learning with coarse beliefs, we find qualitatively different outcomes from those in standard models: disagreement is generic, influence is multi-faceted, and information aggregation becomes impossible. We obtain a natural framework in which to study echo chambers and various strategies to manipulate beliefs in a population. I characterize a multi-dimensional measure of influence and evaluate three distinct interventions: changing minds, sowing doubt, and propaganda.
Monday 1 October 2018 17:00-18:30
Salle R1-09, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris
RUSTICHINI Aldo (U of Minnesota) : Bioeconomics: two examples
Abstract
Bioeconomic describes the research program that aims at laying the foundation of the analysis of economic and strategic behavior on its biological foundation. Bioeconomics takes seriously the hypothesis that human economic behavior is biologically based: to the first order approximation, institutions are downstream from politics, politics is downstream from culture, culture is downstream from biology. In the talk I will present two papers illustrating the concept in action. In the first and second paper I describe how a foundation of stochastic choice on the process determining choice allows us to obtain a precise characterization of individual characteristics producing the choices; not just the economic characteristics (for example, the discount factor in a delayed payments choice task) but also the care and skill used in choice. In the third paper I describe how we can now link educational and economic success, and hence the analysis of intergenerational mobility and inequality, to the genotype of the individuals, and identify the pathways of the effects. The theory is based on classical models of parental investment, extended to consider the genetic profile of the population.
Monday 24 September 2018 17:00-18:30
salle R1-09, campus Jourdan - 75014 Paris
BOGOMOLNAIA Anna (University of Glasgow) : Fair Division of random objects
H Moulin, F Sandomirskyi
Abstract
Fair Division of random objects A Bogomolnaia, H Moulin, F Sandomirskyi Objects arrive randomly, and must be allocated on the spot between a ?xed set of bene?ciaries. We explore the tradeo¤ between the concerns for Fairness and the utilitarian measure of E¢ ciency: Fair Share guarantees to each agent, in expectation and in each period, at least 1/n-th of the value to him of the goods (or at most 1/n-th of the disutility of the bads); E¢ ciency assigns goods to those who value them most (or bads to those who dislike them least). Even a Bayesian manager (who knows in each period the full probability distribution of utility pro?les) faces a steep (and well known) Price of Fairness: in the worst case implementing Fair Share allows her to capture only a O( 1 pn) fraction of the e¢ cient surplus. A Prior-free manager who only knows the expectation of individual utilities in each period (or just the ratios of these expectations), but neither the actual distribution in any period, nor the number of periods, ensures Fair Share by the simple Proportional rule: agents get the object with probabilities proportional to their (normalized) utilities (or disutilities). We de?ne the equally simple one-dimensional family of Top Heavy rules and show that they capture the optimal tradeo¤s between fairness and e¢ ciency: any other prior-free rule meeting Fair Share is less e¢ cient ex post (for every realization of utilities) than one of our rules. In particular the Proportional rule is substantially less e¢ cient than one of our rules. Moreover the Top Heavy rules pay the same Price of Fairness as the best Bayesian rules. 1
Monday 17 September 2018 17:00-18:30
Salle R1-09, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris
RICHTER Michael (Royal Holloway) : Normative Equilibrium: The permissible and the forbidden as devices for bringing order to economic environments
Abstract
We introduce the notion of a normative equilibrium as a method which brings harmony to "general equilibrium" like environments where individuals make preference-maximizing choices but not every profile of choices is feasible. In an equilibrium, norms stipulate what is permissible and what is forbidden. These uniform norms play a role analogous to that of price systems in competitive equilibrium and also feature some element of "fairness" since all individuals face the same choice set. The solution concept is a maximally permissive set of alternatives that is consistent with the existence of a profile of optimal choices which is feasible. Properties of the solution concept are analysed and the concept is applied to a variety of economic settings.
Full text [pdf]
Monday 11 June 2018 17:00-18:30
Salle R1-09, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris
LIPMAN Barton (Boston University) : Acquisition of/Stochastic Evidence
Monday 28 May 2018 17:00-18:30
Salle R1-09, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris
FEINMESSER Itay (Johns Hopkins University) : The Market for Influence
Abstract
Much of the content we consume comes from onlineresources. We read news on Facebook and Twitter and learn about new products and services from Instagram and blogs. This paper builds a parsimonious economic model that captures the interplay between contentcreators (or influencers), consumers (or followers), and firms (or marketers) in the provision of content on the internet, and in influencing economic activity in the market for goods. We derive a unique equilibrium with the following properties: First, high ability influencers post more sponsored content, and this adversely affects the experience of their followers. Still, high ability influencers deliver, in equilibrium, better experience then low ability ones. As a result, high ability influencers have more followers, and receive a higher per-post price. Surprisingly, the per-reader price that an influencer receives declines with her popularity, a result that is confirmed by marketing data. We uncover equilibrium inefficiencies that are exacerbated by search frictions in the market and analyze the recent recommendation of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to apply “The FTC’s Endorsement Guides” to content created by individual influencers. Under a wide range of parameters, such policy may be detrimental to followers’ welfare and total surplus.
Monday 14 May 2018 17:00-18:30
Salle R1-13, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris
MUELLER-FRANK Manuel (IESE Barcelona) : Social Learning Equilibria
With Elchanan Mossel, Allan Sly and Omer Tamuz
Abstract
We consider social learning settings in which a group of agents face uncertainty regarding a state of the world, observe private signals, share the same utility function, and act in a general dynamic setting. We introduce Social Learning Equilibria, a static equilibrium concept that abstracts away from the details of the given dynamics, but nevertheless captures the corresponding asymptotic equilibrium behavior. We establish strong equilibrium properties on agreement, herding, and information aggregation.
Monday 7 May 2018 17:00-18:30
Salle R1-09, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris
DEBASIS Mishra (India Statistical Institute Dehli) : Selling to a naive agent with two rationales
Abstract
A seller is selling an object to an agent who uses two rationales to compare pairs of outcomes - (allocation probability, transfer) pairs. Each rationale is generated by quasilinear preference over the outcome space, and hence, can be represented by a val- uation. However, the agent faces a budget constraint when making decisions using the rst rationale. The agent compares any pair of outcomes using his pair of valuations in a lexicographic manner: rst, he compares using the valuation corresponding to the rst rationale; then, he compares using the valuation corresponding to the second ra- tionale if and only if the rst rationale cannot compare (due to budget constraint). We show that the optimal mechanism is either a posted price mechanism or a mechanism involving a pair of posted prices (a menu of three outcomes). In the latter case, the optimal mechanism involves randomization and pools types in the middle.
Full text [pdf]
Monday 9 April 2018 17:00-18:30
Salle R1-09, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris
DEB Rahul (University of Toronto, combined with TSE) : Screening (#FakeNews) in the Attention Economy
Abstract
A substantial fraction of the online economy is financed by attention: frequently, consumers do not pay for the content they access and, instead, clicks are monetized by content providers (via advertising). We study a novel dynamic principal-agent framework in which the principal (a consumer) decides in each period if she should pay costly attention to the agent (a content provider), privately known to be genuine or fake. Genuine providers choose whether or not to release stochastically arriving content of varying quality whereas "fake news" sources can generate fake news at will. The consumer's payoff depends on the (publicly observed and quality dependent) realized accuracy of the content. Our main result demonstrates how the presence of fake news sources distorts the behavior of genuine content providers: in all equilibria (subject to a mild refinement), both poor quality content (by genuine providers) and fake news (by fake news sources) must occur on path. These distortions are features of the attention economy and do not arise if the principal can commit or use transfers.
Monday 26 March 2018 17:00-18:30
Salle R1-09, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris
GUERDJIKOVA Ani (Université de Grenoble) : Heuristic Modes of Decision Making and Survival in Financial Markets
Monday 19 March 2018 17:00-18:30
Salle R1-09, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris
YARIV Leeat (Princeton University) : On the Efficiency of Stable Matchings in Large Markets
with SangMok Lee
Abstract
Stability is often the goal for matching clearinghouses, such as those matching residents to hospitals, students to schools, etc. We study the wedge between stability and utilitarian efficiency in large one-to-one matching markets. We show stable matchings are efficient asymptotically for a rich preference class. The speed at which efficiency of stable matchings converges to its optimum depends on the underlying preferences. Furthermore, for severely imbalanced markets governed by idiosyncratic preferences, or when preferences are sub-modular, stable outcomes may be inefficient asymptotically. Our results can guide market designers who care about efficiency as to when standard stable mechanisms are desirable.
Monday 12 March 2018 17:00-18:30
Salle R1-09, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris
VANNETELBOSCH Vincent (CORE, Université catholique de Louvain) : R&D Network Formation with Myopic and Farsighted Firms
Abstract
We analyze the formation of bilateral R&D collaborations in an oligopoly when each ?rm bene?ts from the research done by other ?rms it is connected to. Firms can be either myopic or farsighted when deciding about the links they want to form. Which R&D networks are likely to emerge with farsighted or myopic ?rms? Which ?rms are more likely to occupy key positions in the R&D network? What is the relationship between the stable R&D network structures and the social welfare? We propose the notion of myopic- farsighted stable set to determine the R&D networks that emerge when some agents are myopic while others are farsighted. A myopic-farsighted stable set is the set of networks satisfying internal and external stability with respect to the notion of myopic-farsighted improving path. Stable R&D networks consist of two components where the larger group of ?rms derive from their R&D collaborations a greater competitive advantage relative to the other group. If there is a majority of myopic ?rms, they form two components of nearly equal size. However, if more than half of the ?rms are farsighted, the largest component comprises roughly three-quarters of ?rms, with farsighted ?rms having in average a higher degree and betweenness centrality than myopic ?rms. However, some myopic ?rms may have a high (if not the highest) betweenness centrality. Thus, even if myopic ?rms are less active in terms of R&D collaborations they may play a crucial role for spreading the innovation within the component. Suppose now that, in addition of myopic and farsighted private ?rms, some ?rms are public ones. We show that (myopic or farsighted) public ?rms can help to stabilize some e¢ cient R&D networks by occupying key positions in the networks. Finally, we study the dynamics of R&D networks starting from an initial state where all ?rms are myopic, and where at each subsequent period some myopic ?rms become farsighted.
Monday 5 March 2018 17:00-18:30
Salle R1-09, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris
MIERENDORFF Konrad (University College London) : Optimal Sequential Decision with Limited Attention
with Yeon-Koo Che
Abstract
We consider a dynamic model of information acquisition. Before taking an action, a decision maker may direct her limited attention to collecting different types of evidence that support alternative actions. The optimal policy combines three strategies: (i) immediate action, (ii) a contradictory strategy seeking to challenge the prior belief, and (iii) a confirmatory strategy seeking to confirm the prior. The model produces a rich dynamic stochastic choice pattern as well as predictions in settings such as jury deliberation and political media choice. Keywords: Wald sequential decision problem, choice of information, contradictory and confirmatory learning strategies, limited attention.
Monday 12 February 2018 17:00-18:30
Salle R1-09, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris
ALOS-FERRER Carlos (Zurich Center for Neuroeconomics (ZNE), University of Zurich) : Imperfect Bayesians: A Process Model and Evidence from Response Times
Abstract
People are not Bayesians. Or are they? This work discusses a simple process model of faulty decision making where deliberative processes standing in for Bayesian updating compete with simpler heuristics, resulting in predictable error and response-time patterns. The predictions are then tested in a decision-making experiment on belief updating where opposite biases can occur, representativeness (overweighting the sample information due to stereotypical appearances) and conservatism (overweighting the prior).
Monday 5 February 2018 17:00-18:30
Salle R1-09, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris
SPRUMONT Yves (Université de Montréal) : Strategy-proof Choice of Acts
Eric Bahel
Abstract
We model uncertain social prospects as acts mapping states of nature to (public) outcomes. A social choice function (or SCF) assigns an act to every profile of subjective expected utility preferences over acts. A SCF is strategyproof if no agent ever has an incentive to misrepresent her beliefs about the states of nature or her valuation of the outcomes; it is ex-post efficient if the act selected at any given preference profile picks a Pareto-efficient outcome in every state of nature. We offer a complete characterization of all strategyproof and ex-post efficient SCFs. The chosen act must pick the most preferred outcome of some (possibly different) agent in every state of nature. The set of states in which an agent's top outcome is selected may vary with the reported belief profile; it is the union of all the states assigned to her by a collection of constant, bilaterally dictatorial, or bilaterally consensual assignment rules.
Full text [pdf]
Monday 29 January 2018 17:00-18:30
Salle R1-09, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris
VIDA Peter (Université de Cergy-Pontoise) : Strategic Stability of Equilibria in Multi-Sender Signaling Games
Monday 22 January 2018 17:00-18:30
Salle R1-09, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris
JEWITT Ian (Oxford) : Selecting from an Endogenous Pool of Applicants
Monday 15 January 2018 17:00-18:30
Salle R1-09, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris
ZAPECHELNYUK Andriy (University of St Andrews) : A delegation approach to persuasion
Abstract
We study a monotone persuasion problem. This is a problem of Bayesian persuasion between a principal and an agent, in which the principal's choice of information disclosure is restricted to monotone partitions. We show that this problem is equivalent to a constrained delegation problem, with the implication that solving one problem also means solving the other. We use this equivalence to apply known techniques in the delegation literature to address the monotone persuasion problem.
Monday 11 December 2017 17:00-18:30
Salle R1-09, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris
NAVA Francesco (LSE) : “Differentiated Durable Goods: Competition and Market Power”
Monday 4 December 2017 17:00-18:30
Salle R1-09, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris
KLAUS Bettina : Serial Dictatorship Mechanisms with Reservation Prices
Abstract
Abstract: We propose a new set of mechanisms, which we call serial dictatorship mechanisms with reservation prices for the allocation of one indivisible good. We show that a mechanism satisfies minimal tradability, individual rationality, strategy-proofness, consistency, and non wasteful tie-breaking if and only if there exists a reservation price vector and a priority ordering such that the mechanism is a serial dictatorship mechanism with reservation prices. We obtain a second characterization by replacing individual rationality with non-imposition. In both our characterizations the reservation price vector, the priority ordering, and the mechanism are all found simultaneously and endogenously from the properties. In addition, we show that in our model a mechanism satisfies Pareto efficiency, strategy-proofness, and consistency if and only if it is welfare equivalent to a classical serial dictatorship. Finally, we illustrate how the normative requirements governing the functioning of some real life markets and the mechanisms that these markets use are reasonably well captured by our model and results.
Monday 27 November 2017 17:00-18:30
Salle R1-09, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris
APESTEGUIA Jose : Separating Predicted Randomness from Noise
Abstract
Abstract: Given observed stochastic choice data and a model of stochastic choice, we offer a methodology that allows to separate the data representing the randomness that is inherent to the model from what is noisy behavior. In so doing, we quantify the maximal fraction of the data consistent with the model. We show how to implement our approach to any model of stochastic choice. We then study the case of four well-known models, that capture different notions of randomness. Finally, we illustrate our results with an experimental dataset.
Monday 20 November 2017 17:00-18:30
Salle R1-09, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris
ESPONDA Ignacio (UC Santa Barbara ) : Equilibrium in Bayesian Markov Decision Processes
Demian Pouzo
Abstract
Abstract: We provide an equilibrium framework for modeling the behavior of an agent who holds a simplified view of a dynamic optimization problem. The agent faces a Markov Decision Process, where a transition probability function determines the evolution of a state variable as a function of the previous state and the agent's action. The agent is uncertain about the true transition function and has a prior over a set of possible transition functions; this set reflects the agent's (possibly simplified) view of her environment and may not contain the true function. We define an equilibrium concept and provide conditions under which it characterizes steady-state behavior when the agent updates her beliefs using Bayes' rule. Unlike the case for static environments, however, an equilibrium approach for the dynamic setting cannot be used to characterize those steady states where the agent perceives that learning is incomplete. Two key features of our approach is that it distinguishes between the agent's simplified model and the true primitives and that the agent's belief is determined endogenously in equilibrium.
Monday 13 November 2017 17:00-18:30
Salle R1-13, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris
KREMER Michael (Harvard University) : Raising Capital from Heterogeneous Investors
Abstract
A firm raises capital from heterogeneous investors to fund a project. The project is implemented only if the total capital raised exceeds an initially unknown threshold, and the firm offers payments depending on project implementation. We study the firm’s optimal self-financing scheme that maximizes its payoff subject to all investors participating being the unique equilibrium outcome. The optimal scheme features full collateral: if the project is not implemented, each investor is refunded her capital. Under implementation, however, net returns differ across investors. If the distribution of the investment threshold is log-concave, the firm offers higher returns to larger investors. Moreover, higher dispersion in investor size raises the firm’s payoff.
Monday 6 November 2017 17:00-18:30
Salle R1-09, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris
LAUERMANN Stephan (Bonn) : Costly Advice"
Mehmet Ekmekci (Boston College)
Abstract
Abstract We study a scenario in which a receiver is collecting non-binding advice for a binary decision from partially informed senders who can send binary messages. This reflects situations such as non-binding voting of shareholders on a management proposal. Under complete information, the preferences of the receiver and the senders are aligned but there is a conflict of interest over the trade-off of Type I and Type II errors. Existing work shows that for many such situations, the bias prohibits the transmission of any information. Here, in contrast to this work, we consider a setting in which one of the messages is costly. For example, there are positive costs of voting but no costs of abstention. We show that informative advice is given in any equilibrium. When there are many senders, with costly advice, the outcome is equivalent to the one under complete information.
Monday 16 October 2017 17:00-18:30
Salle R1-09, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris
PENTA Antonio (UW-Madison) : Rationalizability and Observability
Monday 9 October 2017 17:00-18:30
Salle R1-09, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris
WOLITZKY Alexander (MIT) : Learning from Others' Outcomes
Abstract
Abstract: I develop a simple model of social learning in which players observe others' outcomes but not their actions. There is a continuum of players, and each player chooses once-and-for-all between a safe action (which succeeds with known probability) and a risky action (which succeeds with fixed but unknown probability, depending on the state of the world). The actions also differ in their costs. Before choosing, a player observes the outcomes of K others. There is always an equilibrium in which success is more likely in the good state, and this regularity property holds whenever the initial generation of players is not well-informed about the state. In the case of an outcome-improving innovation (where the risky action may yield a higher probability of success), players take the correct action as K??. In the case of a cost-saving innovation (where the risky action involves saving a cost but accepting a lower probability of success), inefficiency persists as K?? in any regular equilibrium. Whether inefficiency takes the form of under-adoption or over-adoption also depends on the nature of the innovation. Convergence of the population to equilibrium may be non-monotone.
Monday 2 October 2017 17:00-18:30
salle R1-09, campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan - 75014 Paris
SANTIAGO OLIVEROS (University of Essex) : `Collective Hold-Up
with Matias Iaryczower
Monday 18 September 2017 17:00-18:30
The session was canceled.
Salle R1-09, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris
MYLOVANOV Tymofiy (University Pittsburgh) : *
Monday 26 June 2017 17:00-18:30
salle R2-01, campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris
*
Monday 19 June 2017 17:00-18:30
Salle R1-09, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris
SORENSEN Peter Norman (Université de Copenhague) : Strategic Sample selection
Abstract
What is the impact of sample selection on the inference payoff of an evaluator testing a simple hypothesis based on the outcome of a location experiment? Compared to a random data point, data selected as the highest of several observations is less dispersed and thus always increases the evaluator’s welfare if and only if quantile density of the noise distribution is less elastic than for the Gumbel distribution, as with logistic or normal noise. More generally, we characterize the welfare impact of sample selection depending on its effect on local dispersion. Also, we show that extreme selection benefits the evaluator. The results are applied to the analysis of strategic sample selection by a biased researcher who strategically selects the most favorable of several observations.
Full text [pdf]
Monday 12 June 2017 17:00-18:30
Salle R1-15, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris
BACCARA Mariagiovanna (Washington University in St Louis) : Optimal Dynamic Matching
Abstract
Abstract We study a dynamic matching environment where individuals arrive sequentially. There is a tradeoff between waiting for a thicker market, allowing for higher quality matches, and minimizing agentsí waiting costs. The optimal mechanism cumulates a stock of incongruent pairs up to a threshold and matches all others in an assortative fashion instantaneously. In decentralized settings, a similar protocol ensues in equilibrium, but expected queues are inefficiently long. We quantify the welfare gain from centralization, which can be substantial, even for low waiting costs. We also evaluate welfare improvements generated by transfer schemes and by matching individuals in fixed time intervals.
Monday 29 May 2017 17:00-18:30
Salle R1-15, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris
DUTTA Bhaskar (U of Warwick) : Coalition formation with history dependence
joint with Hannu Vartiainen
Abstract
Abstract. Farsighted formulations of coalitional formation, for instance by Harsanyi (1974) and Ray and Vohra(2015), have typically been based on the von Neumann-Morgenstern (1944) stable set. These farsighted stable sets use a notion of indirect dominance in which an outcome can be dominated by a chain of coalitional ‘moves’ in which each coalition that is involved in the sequence eventually stands to gain. Dutta and Vohra(2016) point out that these solu- tion concepts do not require coalitions to make optimal moves. Hence, these solution concepts can yield unreasonable predictions. Dutta and Vohra (2016) restricted coalitions to hold common, history independent expectations that in- corporate optimality regarding the continuation path. This paper extends the Dutta-Vohra analysis by allowing for history dependent expectations. The pa- per provides characterization results for two solution concepts corresponding to two versions of optimality. It demonstrates the power of history dependence by establishing non-emptyness results for all finite games as well as transferable utility partition function games. The paper also provides partial comparisons of the solution concepts to other solutions.
Monday 22 May 2017 17:00-18:30
Salle R1-15, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris
GUO Yingni (Northwestern) : The Interval Structure of Optimal Disclosure
Eran Shmaya
Abstract
Abstract A sender persuades a receiver to accept a project by disclosing information regarding a payoff-relevant state. The receiver has private information about the state, referred to as his type. We show that the sender-optimal mechanism takes the form of nested intervals: each type accepts on an interval of states and a more optimistic type’s in- terval contains a less optimistic type’s interval. This nested-interval structure offers a simple algorithm to solve for the optimal disclosure and connects our problem to monopoly screening problems. The mechanism is optimal even if the sender conditions the disclosure mechanism on the receiver’s reported type.
Full text [pdf]
Monday 15 May 2017 17:00-18:30
Salle R1-15, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris
SAMUELSON Larry (Yale) : Agreeing to Disagree in Large Worlds
Itzhak Gilboa and David Schmeidler
Monday 24 April 2017 17:00-18:30
Salle R1-15, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris
SEIDMANN Daniel (University of Nottingham) : The first and last word in debates: plaintive plaintiffs
Elena D’Agostino
Abstract
Abstract: Plaintiffs/prosecutors present their evidence before defendants in common law trials. We analyze a model of trials with the following properties. If litigants share available evidence then they never prefer to present first, but may prefer to present second. However, litigants may otherwise prefer to present first because doing so replicates the follower's ex ante optimal commitment. If litigants share available evidence then a litigant cannot prefer the option to choose the order after observing its available evidence over always presenting second; and may prefer to always present second over having the option to choose the order.
Monday 27 March 2017 17:00-18:30
Salle R1-15, Nouveau Bâtiment, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris
ECHENIQUE Frederico (CalTech) : On multiple discount rates
Chris Chambers
Abstract
Disagreements over long-term projects can often be traced to assumptions about the discount rate. The debate in economics over climate change is a case in point. We propose a theory of intertemporal choice that is robust to specific assumptions on the discount rate. Our discussion is centered around three models: The PARETO model requires that one utility stream be chosen over another if and only if its discounted value is higher for all discount factors in a set of possible factors. The UTILITARIAN model focuses on an average discount factor. The MAXMIN model evaluates a ow by the lowest available discounted value. We propose these models as robust decision criteria for intertemporal choice, investigate their properties, and break them down axiomatically.
Monday 20 March 2017 17:00-18:30
Salle R1-15, Nouveau Bâtiment, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris
CANTILLON Estelle (Université Libre de Bruxelles) : Respecting priorities versus respecting preferences in school choice: When is there a trade-off?
Monday 6 March 2017 17:00-18:30
Salle E001, RDC Bâtiment E, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris
ELLIOTT Robert (Burmingham) : Endogenous Financial Networks: Efficient Modularity and Why Shareholders Prevent It
Abstract
We consider systemic risk in financial networks, by examining the conflict of interest between debt- and equity-holders. Through trading, banks can diversify their idiosyncratic risks and avoid failures following small shocks. However, the resulting interdependencies can cause multiple failures after large shocks. A social planner resolves this trade-off by creating a modular network structure with fire breaks, thereby preventing failures from small shocks while containing contagion. Socially efficient networks favor debt-holders over equity holders, meaning equity-holders can profitably trade away from these networks. Moreover, profitable trades for equity holders align their counter-parties’ failures with their own, creating systemic risk.
Monday 27 February 2017 17:00-18:30
Salle E001, RDC Bâtiment E, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris
SEVERINOV Sergei (University of British Columbia) : Optimal and Efficient Mechanisms with Budget Constrained Buyers
Abstract
The paper deals with the optimal and efficient mechanism design for selling to buyers who have commonly known budget constraints. With unequal budgets, our problem is that of asymmetric optimal mechanism design. We derive and characterize both the optimal and efficient mechanisms. The optimal mechanism belongs to one of two classes. When the budget differences are small, the mechanism discriminates only between high-valuation buyers for whom the budget constraint is binding. All low valuations buyers are treated symmetrically despite budget differences. When budget differences are sufficiently large, the optimal mechanism discriminates in favor of buyers with small budgets when the valuations are low, and in favor of buyers with larger budgets when the valuations are high.
Monday 20 February 2017 17:00-18:30
Salle E001, RDC Bâtiment E, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris
YAMASHITA Takuro (TSE) : Optimal Public Information Disclosure by Mechanism Designer
Full text [pdf]
Monday 30 January 2017 17:00-18:30
Salle E001, RDC Bâtiment E, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris
TRANNOY Alain : Land is back... and it should be taxed
Odran BONNET, Guillaume CHAPELLE and Etienne WASMER
Monday 23 January 2017 17:00-18:30
Salle E101, RDC Bâtiment E, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris
BOMMIER Antoine (ETH Zürich) : Household Finance and the Value of Life
Abstract
We analyze life-cycle saving strategies with a recursive model that is designed to provide reasonable positive values for the value of a statistical life. With a positive value of life, risk aversion amplifies the impact of uncertain survival on the discount rate, and thus reduces savings. Our model also predicts that risk aversion lowers stock market participation and leads to choose more conservative portfolios.
Monday 16 January 2017 17:00-18:30
VIGIER Adrien (Oslo Business school) : Dynamic Bayesian Persuasion with Public News
Jacopo Bizzotto et Jesper Rudiger
Full text [pdf]
Monday 12 December 2016 17:00-18:30
GOLUB Ben (Northwestern University) : Expectations, Networks, and Conventions
Stephen Morris
Full text [pdf]
Monday 5 December 2016 17:00-18:30
TANEVA Ina (University of Edinburgh) : Information Design
Monday 28 November 2016 17:00-18:30
LARAKI Rida (CNRS et Lamsade) : Majority Judgment vs. Majority Rule
Michel Balinski
Abstract
The validity of majority rule in an election with but two candidates---and so also of Condorcet consistency---is challenged. Axioms based on evaluating candidates---paralleling those of K. O. May characterizing majority rule for two candidates based on comparing candidates---lead to another method, majority judgment, that is unique in agreeing with the majority rule on pairs of ``polarized'' candidates. It is a practical method that accommodates any number of candidates, avoids both the Condorcet and Arrow paradoxes, and best resists strategic manipulation. It may also be viewed as a ``solution'' to Dahl's (reformulated) intensity problem in that an intense minority sometimes defeats an apathetic majority.
Full text [pdf]
Monday 21 November 2016 17:00-18:30
PERSITZ Dotan (Faculty of Management, Tel Aviv University) : Parametric Recoverability of Preferences
Yoram Halevy and Lanny Zrill
Abstract
Revealed preference theory is brought to bear on the problem of recovering approximate parametric preferences from consistent and inconsistent consumer choices. We propose measures of the incompatibility between the revealed preference ranking implied by choices and the ranking induced by the considered parametric preferences. These incompatibility measures are proven to characterize well-known inconsistency indices. We advocate a recovery approach that is based on such incompatibility measures, and demonstrate its applicability for misspeci cation measurement and model selection. Using an innovative experimental design we empirically substantiate that the proposed revealed-preference-based method predicts choices signi cantly better than a standard distance-based method.
Monday 14 November 2016 17:00-18:30
BOCHET Olivier (NYU-Abu Dhabi) : Coalitional Secure Implementation
Norovsambuu Tumennasan
Monday 7 November 2016 17:00-18:30
SCHUMMER James (Northwestern) : Influencing Waiting Lists
Full text [pdf]
Monday 17 October 2016 17:00-18:30
Campus Jourdan, bâtiment E, rez-de-chaussée, salle 101
RENAULT Jérôme (TSE) : Optimal Dynamic Information Provision
Eilon Solan (Université Tel-Aviv) et Nicolas Vieille (HEC)
Full text [pdf]
Monday 10 October 2016 17:00-18:30
Campus Jourdan, bâtiment E, rez-de-chaussée, salle 101
VIEILLE Nicolas (HEC) : On the speed of learning: do actions really speak louder ?
Monday 3 October 2016 17:00-18:30
Campus Jourdan, bâtiment E, rez-de-chaussée, salle 101
BONATTI Alessandro (MIT Sloan) : Dynamic Oligopoly with Incomplete Information
Gonzalo Cisternas and Juuso Toikka
Full text [pdf]
Monday 26 September 2016 17:00-18:30
Campus Jourdan, bâtiment E, rez-de-chaussée, salle 101
MORENO DE BARREDA Ines (Oxford) : Persuasion without commitment
Monday 19 September 2016 17:00-18:30
*
Monday 27 June 2016 17:00-18:30
Campus Jourdan, bâtiment E, rez-de-chaussée, salle 101
ELIAZ Kfir (Tel Aviv University) : Incentive compatible advertising on a social network
Ran Spiegler
Full text [pdf]
Monday 20 June 2016 17:00-18:30
Campus Jourdan, bâtiment G, rez-de-chaussée, salle 10
SZENTES Balazs (LSE) : Buyer-optimal Demand and Monopoly Pricing
Full text [pdf]
Monday 13 June 2016 17:00-18:30
Campus Jourdan, bâtiment E, rez-de-chaussée, salle 101
HÖRNER Johannes (Yale University) : Markovian Implementation
X. Mu et N. Vieille
Monday 6 June 2016 17:00-18:30
Campus Jourdan, bâtiment E, rez-de-chaussée, salle 101
LI Ming (Concordia University) : Group formation and diversity
Sourav Bhattacharya (University of London)
Monday 30 May 2016 17:00-18:30
Campus Jourdan, bâtiment E, rez-de-chaussée, salle 101
NOELDEKE Georg (Basel University) : The Implementation Duality
Larry Samuelson (Yale University)
Full text [pdf]
Monday 23 May 2016 17:00-18:30
Campus Jourdan, bâtiment E, rez-de-chaussée, salle 101
KLEIN Paul (SU) : Relational Contracts with Private Information: The Upside of Implicit Downsizing Costs
Matthias Fahn (München University)
Abstract
We analyze a relational contracting problem, in which the principal has some private information about the future value of the relationship. In order to reduce bonus pay- ments, the principal is tempted to claim that the value of the future relationship was lower than it actually is. To induce truth-telling, the optimal relational contract may introduce distortions after a bad report. For some levels of the discount factor, output is reduced by more than would be sequentially optimal. This distortion is attenuated over time even if prospects remain bad.
Monday 9 May 2016 17:00-18:30
The session was canceled.
Campus Jourdan, bâtiment E, rez-de-chaussée, salle 101
ORTOLEVA Pietro (Princeton) : Deliberately Stochastic.
Full text [pdf]
Monday 2 May 2016 17:00-18:30
Campus Jourdan, bâtiment E, rez-de-chaussée, salle 101
STEINER Jakub (CERGE-EI and University of Edinburgh) : Rational Inattention Dynamics: Inertia and Delay in Decision-Making
Filip Matejka (CERGE-EI) and Colin Stewart (University of Toronto)
Abstract
We solve a general class of dynamic rational-inattention problems in which an agent repeatedly acquires costly information about an evolving state and selects actions. The solution resembles the choice rule in a dynamic logit model, but it is biased towards an optimal default rule that depends only on the history of actions, not on the realized state. We apply the general solution to the study of (i) the status quo bias; (ii) inertia in actions leading to lagged adjustments to shocks; and (iii) the tradeoff between accuracy and delay in decision-making.
Full text [pdf]
Monday 11 April 2016 17:00-18:30
Campus Jourdan, bâtiment E, rez-de-chaussée, salle 101
GOMES Joseph Flavian (Economics School of Louvain and the Institute of Economic and Social Research (IRES)) : Differential Taxation and Occupational Choice
Alessandro Pavan & Jean-Marie Lozachmeur).
Full text [pdf]
Monday 4 April 2016 17:00-18:30
Campus Jourdan, bâtiment E, rez-de-chaussée, salle 101
SOURAV Bhattacharya (University of Pittsburgh) : A Possibility Theorem on Information Aggregation in Elections
PAULO BARELLI & LUCAS SIGA
Full text [pdf]
Monday 21 March 2016 17:00-18:30
Campus Jourdan, bâtiment E, rez-de-chaussée, salle 101
CHASSANG Sylvain (Princeton) : Collusion in Auctions with Constrained Bids: Theory and Evidence from Public Procurement
Full text [pdf]
Monday 14 March 2016 17:00-18:30
Campus Jourdan, bâtiment A, rez-de-chaussée, salle 2
ALONSO Ricardo (London School of Economics) : Recruitment and Selection in Organizations

Abstract
This paper studies employer recruitment and selection of job applicants when productivity is match-specific. Job seekers have private, noisy estimates of match value, while the firm performs noisy interviews. Job seekers' willingness to incur the application costs varies with the perceived hiring probability, while the firm considers the applicant pool's composition when setting hiring standards. I show that changes in the accuracy of job seekers' estimates, or the firm's interview, affect application decisions, and both can raise hiring costs when they discourage applications. Thus, the firm may favor noisier interviews or prefer to face applicants that are less informed of their person-organization fit.
Full text [pdf]
Monday 7 March 2016 17:00-18:30
Campus Jourdan, bâtiment G, rez-de-chaussée, salle 10
Changes in Social Networks in Response to Exposure to Formal Markets
Monday 7 March 2016 17:00-18:30
Campus Jourdan, bâtiment E, rez-de-chaussée, salle 101
JACKSON Matt (Stanford University) : Changes in Social Networks in Response to Exposure to Formal Markets
Monday 29 February 2016 17:00-18:30
Campus Jourdan, bâtiment G, rez-de-chaussée, salle 10
*
Monday 22 February 2016 17:00-18:30
The session was canceled.
Campus Jourdan, bâtiment G, rez-de-chaussée, salle 10
*
Monday 15 February 2016 17:00-18:30
Campus Jourdan, bâtiment G, rez-de-chaussée, salle 10
GILBOA Itzhak (Tel-Aviv and HEC) : Weighted Utilitarianism, Edgeworth, and the Market
Rossella Argenzianoy
Full text [pdf]
Monday 8 February 2016 17:00-18:30
RENAULT Regis (Université de Cergy) : Search direction
Simon Anderson
Monday 1 February 2016 17:00-18:30
Campus Jourdan, bâtiment G, rez-de-chaussée, salle 10
MARIOTTI Marco (Queen Mary, London) : Revealed Complementarity
Abstract
The Hicksian definition of complementarity and substitutability may not apply in contexts in which agents are not utility maximisers or where prices, whether implicit or explicit, are not available. We look for tools to identify complementarity and substitutability satisfying the following criteria: they are behavioural (based only on observable choice data); model-free (valid whether the agent is rational or not); and they do not rely on price variation. We uncover a conflict between properties that any complementarity notion should intuitively possess. We discuss three di¤erent possible resolutions of the conflict.
Full text [pdf]
Monday 25 January 2016 17:00-18:30
Campus Jourdan, bâtiment G, rez-de-chaussée, salle 10
CHAMBERS Christopher (UCSD) : Benchmarking SALLE 10
Alan D. Milleryz
Full text [pdf]
Monday 18 January 2016 17:00-18:30
Campus Jourdan, bâtiment A, rez-de-chaussée, salle 2
DILME Francesc : Residual Deterrence
Daniel F. Garrett (Toulouse School of Economics)
Full text [pdf]
Monday 7 December 2015 17:00-18:30
Campus Jourdan, bâtiment G, rez-de-chaussée, salle 10
HART Oliver : SHORT-TERM, LONG-TERM, AND CONTINUING CONTRACTS
MAIJA HALONEN-AKATWIJUKA
Full text [pdf]
Monday 30 November 2015 17:00-18:30
MSE - Salle du 6ème étage
YEON-KOO Che : Stable Matching in Large Economies
with Jinwoo Kim and Fuhito Kojima
Full text [pdf]
Monday 23 November 2015 17:00-18:15
Maison des Sciences Economiques, Salle S/1
TAKASHI Ui (Hitotsubashi University) : Optimal Disclosure of Public Information with Endogenous Acquisition of Private Information
Full text [pdf]
Monday 16 November 2015 17:00-18:15
MSE(106, Blv de l'Hôpital, salle du 6ème étage) 75013 Paris
EVANS Robert (Cambridge U. visiting PSE) : Third-Party Sale of Information
In-Uck Park
Monday 9 November 2015 17:00-18:15
MSE(106, Blv de l'Hôpital, salle du 6ème étage) 75013 Paris
CASELLA Alessandra (Columbia University) : Trading Votes for Votes: A Decentralized Matching Algorithm
Monday 2 November 2015 17:00-18:15
MSE(106, Blv de l'Hôpital, salle du 6ème étage) 75013 Paris
HENRY Emeric (Sciences Po) : Waiting for my Neighbors
Full text [pdf]
Monday 12 October 2015 17:00-18:15
RAI Birendra ((Monash University, visiting PSE) ) : Event Subscription and Non-cooperative Network Formation
Monday 5 October 2015 17:00-18:15
MSE (106-112, boulevard de l'Hôpital, salle du 6ème étage) 75013 Paris
DEQUIEDT Vianney (Université d'Auvergne) : Local and Consistent Centrality Measures in Network
Monday 28 September 2015 17:00-18:15
MSE((106-112, boulevard de l'Hôpital - Salle 6ème étage)75013 PARIS
YAMAMOTO Yuichi (University of Pennsylvania) : Stochastic Games with Hidden States"
Monday 21 September 2015 17:00-18:15
MSE (106-112, boulevard de l'Hôpital - Salle 6ème étage)75013 PARIS
ELLIS Randall (Department of Economics Boston University) : Complexity,Correlation, and Choice
Co-author: Michele Piccione
Monday 22 June 2015 17:00-18:15
Campus Jourdan, bâtiment G, rez-de-chaussée, salle 8
RAZIN Ronny (LSE) : Bayesian Peer Influence
Monday 15 June 2015 17:00-18:15
Campus Jourdan, bâtiment G, rez-de-chaussée, salle 8
KARTIK Navin (Columbia University) : A Theorem on Bayesian Updating and Applications to Signaling Games
Co-authors : Frances Xu Lee & Wing Suen
Monday 8 June 2015 17:00-18:15
Campus Jourdan, bâtiment G, rez-de-chaussée, salle 8
SALANIE Bernard (Columbia) : What do Matching Models Predict?
Full text [pdf]
Monday 8 June 2015 17:00-18:15
Campus Jourdan, bâtiment G, rez-de-chaussée, salle 8
SALANIE Bernard (Columbia) : What do Matching Models Predict?
Full text [pdf]
Monday 1 June 2015 17:00-18:15
Campus Jourdan, bâtiment G, rez-de-chaussée, salle 8
POSTLEWITE Andrew (University of Pennsylvania) : Informational size and two-stage mechanisms
Co-author : Richard P. McLean (Rutgers University)
Full text [pdf]
Monday 1 June 2015 17:00-18:15
Campus Jourdan, bâtiment G, rez-de-chaussée, salle 8
POSTLEWITE Andrew (University of Pennsylvania) : Informational size and two-stage mechanisms
Co-author : Richard P. McLean (Rutgers University)
Full text [pdf]
Monday 18 May 2015 17:00-18:15
Campus Jourdan, bâtiment E, rez-de-chaussée, salle 101
AL NAJJAR Nabil (Northwestern) : "This Time is Different.."
Abstract
Systematic deviations from ostensibly rational beliefs appear in many economic, financial, and business contexts. This paper introduces a steady-state competitive equilibrium model (Hopenhayn (1992), Melitz (2003)) where firms maximize expected profit and hold beliefs that are calibrated with market aggregates. Firms agree that the aggregates accurately describe the distribution of productivities of others, but believe their own productivity is drawn from a better distribution. Each firm believes its own project is special, that `this time is different.' In the steady-state, all firms and outside observers agree that market participants are, on average, over-optimistic and that there is over-entry. The equilibrium response to this collective `bias' is a combination of lower prices, higher failure rates, and tighter credit. Corporate financing arrangements are determined in equilibrium, and display a combination of credit-rationing and funding at rates that firms view as too high.
Monday 18 May 2015 17:00-18:15
Campus Jourdan, bâtiment E, rez-de-chaussée, salle 101
AL NAJJAR Nabil (Northwestern) : "This Time is Different.."
Abstract
Systematic deviations from ostensibly rational beliefs appear in many economic, financial, and business contexts. This paper introduces a steady-state competitive equilibrium model (Hopenhayn (1992), Melitz (2003)) where firms maximize expected profit and hold beliefs that are calibrated with market aggregates. Firms agree that the aggregates accurately describe the distribution of productivities of others, but believe their own productivity is drawn from a better distribution. Each firm believes its own project is special, that `this time is different.' In the steady-state, all firms and outside observers agree that market participants are, on average, over-optimistic and that there is over-entry. The equilibrium response to this collective `bias' is a combination of lower prices, higher failure rates, and tighter credit. Corporate financing arrangements are determined in equilibrium, and display a combination of credit-rationing and funding at rates that firms view as too high.
Monday 11 May 2015 17:00-18:15
Campus Jourdan, bâtiment E, rez-de-chaussée, salle 101
ALAOUI Larbi (University Pompeu Fabra) : Endogenous Depth of Reasoning" écrit avec Antonio Penta
Abstract
We introduce a model of strategic thinking in games of initial response. Unlike standard models of strategic thinking, in this framework the player's `depth of reasoning' is endogenously determined, and it can be disentangled from his beliefs over his opponent's cognitive bound. In our approach, individuals act as if they follow a cost-benefit analysis. The depth of reasoning is a function of the player's cognitive abilities and his payoffs. The costs are exogenous and represent the game theoretical sophistication of the player; the benefit instead is related to the game payoffs. Behavior is in turn determined by the individual's depth of reasoning and his beliefs about the reasoning process of the opponent. Thus, in our framework, payoffs not only affect individual choices in the traditional sense, but they also shape the cognitive process itself. Our model delivers testable implications on players' chosen actions as incentives and opponents change. We then test the model's predictions with an experiment. We administer different treatments that vary beliefs over payoffs and opponents, as well as beliefs over opponents' beliefs. The results of this experiment, which are not accounted for by current models of reasoning in games, strongly support our theory. We also show that the predictions of our model are highly consistent, both qualitatively and quantitatively, with well-known unresolved empirical puzzles. Our approach therefore serves as a novel, unifying framework of strategic thinking that allows for predictions across games.
Monday 11 May 2015 17:00-18:15
Campus Jourdan, bâtiment E, rez-de-chaussée, salle 101
ALAOUI Larbi (University Pompeu Fabra) : Endogenous Depth of Reasoning" écrit avec Antonio Penta
Abstract
We introduce a model of strategic thinking in games of initial response. Unlike standard models of strategic thinking, in this framework the player's `depth of reasoning' is endogenously determined, and it can be disentangled from his beliefs over his opponent's cognitive bound. In our approach, individuals act as if they follow a cost-benefit analysis. The depth of reasoning is a function of the player's cognitive abilities and his payoffs. The costs are exogenous and represent the game theoretical sophistication of the player; the benefit instead is related to the game payoffs. Behavior is in turn determined by the individual's depth of reasoning and his beliefs about the reasoning process of the opponent. Thus, in our framework, payoffs not only affect individual choices in the traditional sense, but they also shape the cognitive process itself. Our model delivers testable implications on players' chosen actions as incentives and opponents change. We then test the model's predictions with an experiment. We administer different treatments that vary beliefs over payoffs and opponents, as well as beliefs over opponents' beliefs. The results of this experiment, which are not accounted for by current models of reasoning in games, strongly support our theory. We also show that the predictions of our model are highly consistent, both qualitatively and quantitatively, with well-known unresolved empirical puzzles. Our approach therefore serves as a novel, unifying framework of strategic thinking that allows for predictions across games.
Monday 4 May 2015 17:00-18:15
Campus Jourdan, bâtiment E, rez-de-chaussée, salle 101
BOBTCHEFF Catherine (Toulouse School of Economics) : More Haste, Less Speed? Signaling through Investment Timing
Co-author : Raphaël Levy
Abstract
We consider a real option model in which a cash-constrained entrepreneur learns prior to investing, but at a speed which is private information. The entrepreneur seeks outside funding, and uses the timing of his investment to signal his condence in the venture, and accordingly obtain cheaper credit. In the benchmark case with no informational friction, we show that the optimal investment date may be nonmonotonic or decreasing in learning speed, depending on the prior NPV of the project: better learning increases the value of the option, but also increases the speed of updating. In the presence of asymmetric information, the cash constraint may result in distortions in the investment timing policy, and the ine ciency is higher the more stringent the constraint. In addition, the welfare loss is sometimes higher for projects of higher quality. Ine cient investment policy may take both the form of over-investment (hurried investment as compared to the benchmark), when both entrepreneur types learn su ciently fast, and of under-investment (delayed investment), when the slow-learning type does not learn fast enough. Therefore, the severity of the cash constraint a ects the magnitude of the timing distortion, but not its direction.
Monday 4 May 2015 17:00-18:15
Campus Jourdan, bâtiment E, rez-de-chaussée, salle 101
BOBTCHEFF Catherine (Toulouse School of Economics) : More Haste, Less Speed? Signaling through Investment Timing
Co-author : Raphaël Levy
Abstract
We consider a real option model in which a cash-constrained entrepreneur learns prior to investing, but at a speed which is private information. The entrepreneur seeks outside funding, and uses the timing of his investment to signal his condence in the venture, and accordingly obtain cheaper credit. In the benchmark case with no informational friction, we show that the optimal investment date may be nonmonotonic or decreasing in learning speed, depending on the prior NPV of the project: better learning increases the value of the option, but also increases the speed of updating. In the presence of asymmetric information, the cash constraint may result in distortions in the investment timing policy, and the ine ciency is higher the more stringent the constraint. In addition, the welfare loss is sometimes higher for projects of higher quality. Ine cient investment policy may take both the form of over-investment (hurried investment as compared to the benchmark), when both entrepreneur types learn su ciently fast, and of under-investment (delayed investment), when the slow-learning type does not learn fast enough. Therefore, the severity of the cash constraint a ects the magnitude of the timing distortion, but not its direction.
Monday 13 April 2015 17:00-18:15
Campus Jourdan, bâtiment E, rez-de-chaussée, salle 101
LEVIN Jonathan (Stanford) : Are Dynamic Vickrey Auctions Practical?:Properties of the Combinatorial Clock Auction
Co-author : Andrzej Skrzypaczy
Full text [pdf]
Monday 13 April 2015 17:00-18:15
Campus Jourdan, bâtiment E, rez-de-chaussée, salle 101
LEVIN Jonathan (Stanford) : Are Dynamic Vickrey Auctions Practical?:Properties of the Combinatorial Clock Auction
Co-author : Andrzej Skrzypaczy
Full text [pdf]
Monday 30 March 2015 17:00-18:15
Campus Jourdan, bâtiment E, rez-de-chaussée, salle 101
MANIQUET François (Université de Louvain) : Fairness and well-being measurement
Co-authors : Marc Fleurbaey & Francois Maniquet
Full text [pdf]
Monday 30 March 2015 17:00-18:15
Campus Jourdan, bâtiment E, rez-de-chaussée, salle 101
MANIQUET François (Université de Louvain) : Fairness and well-being measurement
Co-authors : Marc Fleurbaey & Francois Maniquet
Full text [pdf]
Monday 23 March 2015 17:00-18:15
Campus Jourdan, bâtiment E, rez-de-chaussée, salle 101
DEKEL Eddie (Economics Department, Northwestern University, and School of Economic) : Disclosure and Choice
Co-author(s) : Elchanan Ben-Porath and Barton L. Lipman
Abstract
An agent chooses among projects with random outcomes. His payoff is increasing in the outcome and in an observer's expectation of the outcome. With some probability, the agent can disclose the true outcome to the observer. We show that choice is inefficient : the agent favors riskier projects even with lower expected returns. If information can be disclosed by a challenger who prefers lower beliefs of the observer, the chosen project is excessively risky when the agent has better access to information, excessively risk-averse when the challenger has better access, and efficient otherwise. We also characterize the agent's worst-case equilibrium payoff.
Full text [pdf]
Monday 23 March 2015 17:00-18:15
Campus Jourdan, bâtiment E, rez-de-chaussée, salle 101
DEKEL Eddie (Economics Department, Northwestern University, and School of Economic) : Disclosure and Choice
Co-author(s) : Elchanan Ben-Porath and Barton L. Lipman
Abstract
An agent chooses among projects with random outcomes. His payoff is increasing in the outcome and in an observer's expectation of the outcome. With some probability, the agent can disclose the true outcome to the observer. We show that choice is inefficient : the agent favors riskier projects even with lower expected returns. If information can be disclosed by a challenger who prefers lower beliefs of the observer, the chosen project is excessively risky when the agent has better access to information, excessively risk-averse when the challenger has better access, and efficient otherwise. We also characterize the agent's worst-case equilibrium payoff.
Full text [pdf]
Monday 16 March 2015 17:00-18:15
Campus Jourdan, bâtiment E, rez-de-chaussée, salle 101
MOULIN Hervé (University of Galsgow (Visite Polytechnique)) : One dimensional mechanism design
Abstract
When agents'allocations are one-dimensional and preferences are convex, the three perenial goals of mechanism design, efficiency, prior-free incentive compatibility and fairness (horizontal equity) are compatible. This has been known for decades in the cases of voting and of division of a non disposable commodity. We show that it is in fact true when the range of allocation profiles is an arbitrary convex and compact set. Examples include: load balancing with arbitrary flow graph constraints;!coordinating joint work inside a team or across teams, when individual contributions are substitutable or complementary; and any joint venture with a convex technology where each agent provides a single input or consumes a single output. The set of efficient, incentive compatible and fair mechanisms is very rich, and additional requirement such as consistency are needed to identify reasonable candidates.
Monday 16 March 2015 17:00-18:15
Campus Jourdan, bâtiment E, rez-de-chaussée, salle 101
MOULIN Hervé (University of Galsgow (Visite Polytechnique)) : One dimensional mechanism design
Abstract
When agents'allocations are one-dimensional and preferences are convex, the three perenial goals of mechanism design, efficiency, prior-free incentive compatibility and fairness (horizontal equity) are compatible. This has been known for decades in the cases of voting and of division of a non disposable commodity. We show that it is in fact true when the range of allocation profiles is an arbitrary convex and compact set. Examples include: load balancing with arbitrary flow graph constraints;!coordinating joint work inside a team or across teams, when individual contributions are substitutable or complementary; and any joint venture with a convex technology where each agent provides a single input or consumes a single output. The set of efficient, incentive compatible and fair mechanisms is very rich, and additional requirement such as consistency are needed to identify reasonable candidates.
Monday 9 March 2015 17:00-18:15
Campus Jourdan, bâtiment E, rez-de-chaussée, salle 101
GANGULI Jayant (ESSEX) : Pricing effects of ambiguous private information.
Full text [pdf]
Monday 9 March 2015 17:00-18:15
Campus Jourdan, bâtiment E, rez-de-chaussée, salle 101
GANGULI Jayant (ESSEX) : Pricing effects of ambiguous private information.
Full text [pdf]
Monday 2 March 2015 17:00-18:15
Campus Jourdan, bâtiment E, rez-de-chaussée, salle 101
LESHNO Jacob (Columbia) : Unbalanced Random Matching Markets: The Stark Effect of Competition
Co-authors :Itai Ashlagi & Yash Kanoria
Full text [pdf]
Monday 2 March 2015 17:00-18:15
Campus Jourdan, bâtiment E, rez-de-chaussée, salle 101
LESHNO Jacob (Columbia) : Unbalanced Random Matching Markets: The Stark Effect of Competition
Co-authors :Itai Ashlagi & Yash Kanoria
Full text [pdf]
Monday 9 February 2015 17:00-18:15
Campus Jourdan, bâtiment E, rez-de-chaussée, salle 101
ATTAR Andrea (University of Roma Tor Vergata,Toulouse School of Economics (IDEI) : Multiple Contracting in Insurance Markets: Cross-Subsidies and Quantity Discounts
Co-authors : Thomas Mariotti & François Salanié
Full text [pdf]
Monday 9 February 2015 17:00-18:15
Campus Jourdan, bâtiment E, rez-de-chaussée, salle 101
ATTAR Andrea (University of Roma Tor Vergata,Toulouse School of Economics (IDEI) : Multiple Contracting in Insurance Markets: Cross-Subsidies and Quantity Discounts
Co-authors : Thomas Mariotti & François Salanié
Full text [pdf]
Monday 2 February 2015 17:00-18:15
Campus Jourdan, bâtiment E, rez-de-chaussée, salle 101
SPIEGLER Ran (University College London - Tel Aviv University) : Bayesian Networks and Boundedly Rational Expectations
Abstract
I present a framework for analyzing decision making under imperfect understanding of the environment’s correlation structure. The decision maker faces an objective long-run probability distribution p over a number of variables (including his own action). He is characterized by a directed acyclic graph R over the set of variable labels. His subjective belief factorizes according to R, via the standard Bayesian-network formula. This belief distortion implies that the decision maker’s long-run behavior may a effect his perception of the consequences of his actions. I characterize the cases when it does, and define accordingly a "personal equilibrium" notion of subjectively optimal choice. The framework provides a simple graphical representation of various belief biases (coarse reasoning, reverse causality, attribution errors), subsuming recent models of boundedly-rational equilibrium expectations as special cases. The framework’s potential for economic applications is demonstrated with a few stylized examples
Monday 2 February 2015 17:00-18:15
Campus Jourdan, bâtiment E, rez-de-chaussée, salle 101
SPIEGLER Rani (Berglas School of Economics, Tel Aviv University) : Bayesian Networks and Boundedly Rational Expectations
Abstract
I present a framework for analyzing decision making under imperfect understanding of the environment’s correlation structure. The decision maker faces an objective long-run probability distribution p over a number of variables (including his own action). He is characterized by a directed acyclic graph R over the set of variable labels. His subjective belief factorizes according to R, via the standard Bayesian-network formula. This belief distortion implies that the decision maker’s long-run behavior may a effect his perception of the consequences of his actions. I characterize the cases when it does, and define accordingly a "personal equilibrium" notion of subjectively optimal choice. The framework provides a simple graphical representation of various belief biases (coarse reasoning, reverse causality, attribution errors), subsuming recent models of boundedly-rational equilibrium expectations as special cases. The framework’s potential for economic applications is demonstrated with a few stylized examples
Monday 26 January 2015 17:00-18:15
Campus Jourdan, bâtiment E, rez-de-chaussée, salle 101
LAMBA Rohit (Cambridge) : Repeated Bargaining: A Mechanism Design Approach
Abstract
Through a model of repeated bargaining between a buyer and a seller, with changing private information on both sides, this paper addresses questions of eciency and institutional structures in dynamic mechanism design. A new technical device in the form of a history dependent version of payo equivalence is established. A new notion of interim budget balance is introduced which allows for the role of an intermediary but with bounded credit lines. We then construct a mechanism, which provides a necessary and sucient condition for eciency under interim budget balance. The existence of a future surplus can be used as collateral to sustain eciency, and its size determines the possibility. The mechanism also oers a simple and realistic implementation. A characterization of ecient implementation under ex post budget balance is also provided. Further, a characterization for the second best is presented, and its equivalent Ramsey pricing formulation is established. A suboptimal, but incentive compatible mechanism for the second best with intuitive properties is presented. When property rights are uid, that is, the good can be shared, a folk theorem with a simple mechanism is constructed.
Full text [pdf]
Monday 26 January 2015 17:00-18:15
LAMBA Rohit : Repeated Bargaining: A Mechanism Design Approach SALLE 10
Abstract
Through a model of repeated bargaining between a buyer and a seller, with changing private information on both sides, this paper addresses questions of eciency and institutional structures in dynamic mechanism design. A new technical device in the form of a history dependent version of payo equivalence is established. A new notion of interim budget balance is introduced which allows for the role of an intermediary but with bounded credit lines. We then construct a mechanism, which provides a necessary and sucient condition for eciency under interim budget balance. The existence of a future surplus can be used as collateral to sustain eciency, and its size determines the possibility. The mechanism also oers a simple and realistic implementation. A characterization of ecient implementation under ex post budget balance is also provided. Further, a characterization for the second best is presented, and its equivalent Ramsey pricing formulation is established. A suboptimal, but incentive compatible mechanism for the second best with intuitive properties is presented. When property rights are uid, that is, the good can be shared, a folk theorem with a simple mechanism is constructed.
Full text [pdf]
Monday 19 January 2015 17:00-18:15
Campus Jourdan, bâtiment E, rez-de-chaussée, salle 101
HENRANDEZ-LAGOS Pablo (NYU) : Political Identity and Trust
Abstract
We explore how political identity affects trust. Using an incentivized experimental survey we vary information about partners' partisan identity to elicit trust behavior and beliefs. By eliciting beliefs, we are able to assess whether differences in trust rates are due to stereotyping or a "taste for discrimination." By measuring actual trustworthiness, we are able to determine whether beliefs are statistically correct. We find that trust is pervasive and depends on the partisan identity of the trustee. Differential trust rates are explained by incorrect stereotypes about the other's lack of trustworthiness rather than by a "taste for discrimination.
Full text [pdf]
Monday 19 January 2015 17:00-18:15
Campus Jourdan, bâtiment E, rez-de-chaussée, salle 101
HENRANDEZ-LAGOS Pablo (NYU) : Political Identity and Trust
Abstract
We explore how political identity affects trust. Using an incentivized experimental survey we vary information about partners' partisan identity to elicit trust behavior and beliefs. By eliciting beliefs, we are able to assess whether differences in trust rates are due to stereotyping or a "taste for discrimination." By measuring actual trustworthiness, we are able to determine whether beliefs are statistically correct. We find that trust is pervasive and depends on the partisan identity of the trustee. Differential trust rates are explained by incorrect stereotypes about the other's lack of trustworthiness rather than by a "taste for discrimination.
Full text [pdf]
Monday 12 January 2015 17:00-18:15
Campus Jourdan, bâtiment E, rez-de-chaussée, salle 101
KOS Nenad (Bocconi - Milan) : Information in Tender Offers with a Large Shareholder.
Full text [pdf]
Monday 12 January 2015 17:00-18:15
Campus Jourdan, bâtiment E, rez-de-chaussée, salle 101
KOS Nenad (Bocconi - Milan) : Information in Tender Offers with a Large Shareholder.
Full text [pdf]
Monday 5 January 2015 17:00-18:15
Campus Jourdan, bâtiment E, rez-de-chaussée, salle 101
ESÖ Peter (Oxford University) : Persuasion and Pricing
Co-author : Chris Wallace (University of Leicester)
Monday 5 January 2015 17:00-18:15
Campus Jourdan, bâtiment E, rez-de-chaussée, salle 101
ESÖ Peter (Oxford University) : Persuasion and Pricing
Co-author : Chris Wallace (University of Leicester)
Monday 15 December 2014 17:00-18:15
Maison des Sciences Économiques (106-112, boulevard de l'Hôpital - Salle 115) 75013 Paris
STRZALECKI Tomasz (Harvard) : Stochastic choice and revealed perturbed utility
Full text [pdf]
Monday 15 December 2014 17:00-18:15
Maison des Sciences Économiques (106-112, boulevard de l'Hôpital - Salle 115) 75013 Paris
STRZALECKI Tomasz (Harvard) : Stochastic choice and revealed perturbed utility
Full text [pdf]
Monday 8 December 2014 17:00-18:15
MSE (106-112, boulevard de l'Hôpital - Salle du 6ème étage) 75013 PARIS
STANCHEVA Stephanie (Harvard University) : Optimal taxation and human capital policies over the life cycle
Full text [pdf]
Monday 8 December 2014 17:00-18:15
MSE (106-112, boulevard de l'Hôpital - Salle du 6ème étage) 75013 PARIS
STANCHEVA Stephanie (Harvard University) : Optimal taxation and human capital policies over the life cycle
Full text [pdf]
Monday 1 December 2014 17:00-18:15
MSE (106-112, boulevard de l'Hôpital - Salle du 6ème étage) 75013 PARIS
GALEOTTI Andrea (Essex) : Information on consumption’s externalities, monopoly pricing and consumers’ surplus
Abstract
The increase in the information that firms can obtain about the interactions and influences of their consumers motivates two important questions: How does the pricing strategy of a firm reacts to detailed information on consumers' externalities? Is the availability and use of such information beneficial or detrimental for consumer welfare? We study these questions in a model where a monopoly sells a network good and may price discriminate using information on consumers' influences and/or on consumers' susceptibilities to influence. Our framework incorporates a rich set of market products, including goods characterized by global and local network effects. The optimal pricing takes a simple form, which entails a price discount for the influence of consumers and a price premium for their susceptibility; both of these components are a function of the pattern of externalities across consumers. We can determine under which conditions, relative to uniform price, consumer surplus increases. We provide a full characterization of the value of network information for the monopolist.
Monday 1 December 2014 17:00-18:15
MSE (106-112, boulevard de l'Hôpital - Salle du 6ème étage) 75013 PARIS
GALEOTTI Andrea (Essex) : Information on consumption’s externalities, monopoly pricing and consumers’ surplus
Abstract
The increase in the information that firms can obtain about the interactions and influences of their consumers motivates two important questions: How does the pricing strategy of a firm reacts to detailed information on consumers' externalities? Is the availability and use of such information beneficial or detrimental for consumer welfare? We study these questions in a model where a monopoly sells a network good and may price discriminate using information on consumers' influences and/or on consumers' susceptibilities to influence. Our framework incorporates a rich set of market products, including goods characterized by global and local network effects. The optimal pricing takes a simple form, which entails a price discount for the influence of consumers and a price premium for their susceptibility; both of these components are a function of the pattern of externalities across consumers. We can determine under which conditions, relative to uniform price, consumer surplus increases. We provide a full characterization of the value of network information for the monopolist.
Monday 24 November 2014 17:00-18:15
MSE (106-112, boulevard de l'Hôpital - Salle du 6ème étage) 75013 PARIS
LOVO Stefano (HEC) : Robust Price Formation
Co-authors : J. Hörner et T. Tomala
Monday 24 November 2014 17:00-18:15
MSE (106-112, boulevard de l'Hôpital - Salle du 6ème étage) 75013 PARIS
LOVO Stefano (HEC) : Robust Price Formation
Co-authors : J. Hörner et T. Tomala
Monday 17 November 2014 17:00-18:15
MSE (106-112, boulevard de l'Hôpital - salle du 6ème étage) 75013 Paris
BRAMOULLE Yann (Aix-Marseille) : Altruism in Networks
Co-author : Renaud Bourlès
Full text [pdf]
Monday 17 November 2014 17:00-18:15
MSE (106-112, boulevard de l'Hôpital - salle du 6ème étage) 75013 Paris
BRAMOULLE Yann (Aix-Marseille) : Altruism in Networks
Co-author : Renaud Bourlès
Full text [pdf]
Monday 3 November 2014 17:00-18:15
MSE (106-112, boulevard de l'Hôpital - Salle S/2) 75013 Paris
TOMALA Tristan (Visite PSE) : Atomic Dynamic Congestion Games
Co-authors: Marco Scarsini (LUISS), Marc Schroeder (U. Maastricht) & Tristan Tomala (HEC Paris)
Abstract
In this paper, we propose a model of discrete time dynamic congestion games with atomic players. This approach allows to give a precise description of the dynamics induced by the individual strategies of players and to study how the steady state is reached, either when players act selfishly, or when the traffic is controlled by a planner. We model also seasonalities by assuming that departure flows fluctuate periodically with time. We focus mostly on simple networks and give closed form formulas for the long-run equilibrium and optimal latencies, as functions of the seasonality. We then derive computations and bounds on the price of anarchy. We also characterize optimal and equilibrium flows and show that, although they produce different costs, they coincide from some time onwards.
Full text [pdf]
Monday 3 November 2014 17:00-18:15
MSE (106-112, boulevard de l'Hôpital - Salle S/2) 75013 Paris
TOMALA Tristan (Visite PSE) : Atomic Dynamic Congestion Games
Co-authors: Marco Scarsini (LUISS), Marc Schroeder (U. Maastricht) & Tristan Tomala (HEC Paris)
Abstract
In this paper, we propose a model of discrete time dynamic congestion games with atomic players. This approach allows to give a precise description of the dynamics induced by the individual strategies of players and to study how the steady state is reached, either when players act selfishly, or when the traffic is controlled by a planner. We model also seasonalities by assuming that departure flows fluctuate periodically with time. We focus mostly on simple networks and give closed form formulas for the long-run equilibrium and optimal latencies, as functions of the seasonality. We then derive computations and bounds on the price of anarchy. We also characterize optimal and equilibrium flows and show that, although they produce different costs, they coincide from some time onwards.
Full text [pdf]
Monday 13 October 2014 17:00-18:15
MSE(106-112, boulevard de l'Hôpital - Salle du 6ème étage) 75647 Paris Cedex 13
SZALAY Dezso (BONN) : Smooth, strategic communication
Abstract
We study strategic information transmission in a Sender-Receiver game where players' optimal actions depend on the realization of multiple signals but the players disagree on the relative importance of each piece of news. We characterize a statistical environment - featuring symmetric loss functions and elliptically distributed parameters - in which the Sender's expected utility depends only on the first moment of his posterior. Despite disagreement about the use of underlying signals, we demonstrate the existence of equilibria in differentiable strategies in which the Sender can credibly communicate posterior means. The existence of smooth communication equilibria depends on the relative usefulness of the signal structure to Sender and Receiver, respectively. We characterize extensive forms in which the quality of information is optimally designed of equal importance to Sender and Receiver so that the best equilibrium in terms of ex ante expected payoffs is a smooth communication equilibrium. The quality of smooth equilibrium communication is entirely determined by the correlation of interests. Senders with better aligned preferences are endogenously endowed with better information and therefore give more accurate advice.
Full text [pdf]
Monday 13 October 2014 17:00-18:15
MSE(106-112, boulevard de l'Hôpital - Salle du 6ème étage) 75647 Paris Cedex 13
SZALAY Dezso (BONN) : Smooth, strategic communication
Abstract
We study strategic information transmission in a Sender-Receiver game where players' optimal actions depend on the realization of multiple signals but the players disagree on the relative importance of each piece of news. We characterize a statistical environment - featuring symmetric loss functions and elliptically distributed parameters - in which the Sender's expected utility depends only on the first moment of his posterior. Despite disagreement about the use of underlying signals, we demonstrate the existence of equilibria in differentiable strategies in which the Sender can credibly communicate posterior means. The existence of smooth communication equilibria depends on the relative usefulness of the signal structure to Sender and Receiver, respectively. We characterize extensive forms in which the quality of information is optimally designed of equal importance to Sender and Receiver so that the best equilibrium in terms of ex ante expected payoffs is a smooth communication equilibrium. The quality of smooth equilibrium communication is entirely determined by the correlation of interests. Senders with better aligned preferences are endogenously endowed with better information and therefore give more accurate advice.
Full text [pdf]
Monday 6 October 2014 17:00-18:15
MSE (106-112, boulevard de l'Hôpital - Salle du 6ème étage) 75647 PARIS cedex 13
HOPKINS Ed (Edinburgh School of Economics) : Inequality, Gender and Risk-Taking Behaviour
Abstract
This paper investigates social influences on attitudes to risk and offers a theoretical explanation of how risk-taking varies with gender, relative position and inequality. Individuals about to participate in a tournament may take fair gambles even though they are risk averse in both consumption and tournament rewards. While this risk-taking is increasing in the equality of initial endowments, it is found here that it is increasing in the inequality of rewards in the tournament. Indeed, the poorest will be risk loving if the value of the worst reward is sufficiently low. Further, the level of equality of wealth that is compatible with stability, that is gives no incentive to gamble, is increasing in the equality of rewards. Thus, inequality in rewards can cause inequality in wealth. Finally, in a marriage-matching version of the tournament, it is found that the more numerous gender will be more risk taking.
Monday 6 October 2014 17:00-18:15
MSE (106-112, boulevard de l'Hôpital - Salle du 6ème étage) 75647 PARIS cedex 13
HOPKINS Ed (Edinburgh School of Economics) : Inequality, Gender and Risk-Taking Behaviour
Abstract
This paper investigates social influences on attitudes to risk and offers a theoretical explanation of how risk-taking varies with gender, relative position and inequality. Individuals about to participate in a tournament may take fair gambles even though they are risk averse in both consumption and tournament rewards. While this risk-taking is increasing in the equality of initial endowments, it is found here that it is increasing in the inequality of rewards in the tournament. Indeed, the poorest will be risk loving if the value of the worst reward is sufficiently low. Further, the level of equality of wealth that is compatible with stability, that is gives no incentive to gamble, is increasing in the equality of rewards. Thus, inequality in rewards can cause inequality in wealth. Finally, in a marriage-matching version of the tournament, it is found that the more numerous gender will be more risk taking.
Monday 29 September 2014 17:00-18:15
MSE (106-112, boulevard de l'Hôpital - Salle du 6ème étage ) 75013 Paris
MOREIRA Humberto (FGV/EPGE-Fundation Getulio Vargas- Escola Brasileira de Economia ) : Simultaneous Adverse Selection and Moral Hazard
Co-author : Daniel Gottlieb
Abstract
We study a principal-agent model with moral hazard and adverse selection. Agents have private information about the distribution of outputs conditional on each effort and, possibly, the cost of effort. We prove existence, characterize the solution, and establish several general properties of the resulting multidimensional screening problem. A positive mass of types with low conditional probabilities of success gets a constant payment and zero rents. Exclusion is desirable if and only if it is first-best efficient. Unlike in pure adverse selection models, there is distortion everywhere: the region of types who exert high effort is contained in the interior of the first-best high-effort region. Under additional conditions, the optimal mechanism offers only finitely many contracts. For example, if the agent is risk neutral and has limited liability, all agents are offered a single contract. Our model, therefore, provides a multidimensional screening rationale for the lack of rich menus of contracts observed in certain environments. We apply our framework to multidimensional generalizations of canonical models in insurance, regulation, and optimal taxation and show that it generates novel results.
Full text [pdf]
Monday 29 September 2014 17:00-18:15
MSE (106-112, boulevard de l'Hôpital - Salle du 6ème étage ) 75013 Paris
MOREIRA Marcelo (FGV) : Simultaneous Adverse Selection and Moral Hazard
Co-author : Daniel Gottlieb
Abstract
We study a principal-agent model with moral hazard and adverse selection. Agents have private information about the distribution of outputs conditional on each effort and, possibly, the cost of effort. We prove existence, characterize the solution, and establish several general properties of the resulting multidimensional screening problem. A positive mass of types with low conditional probabilities of success gets a constant payment and zero rents. Exclusion is desirable if and only if it is first-best efficient. Unlike in pure adverse selection models, there is distortion everywhere: the region of types who exert high effort is contained in the interior of the first-best high-effort region. Under additional conditions, the optimal mechanism offers only finitely many contracts. For example, if the agent is risk neutral and has limited liability, all agents are offered a single contract. Our model, therefore, provides a multidimensional screening rationale for the lack of rich menus of contracts observed in certain environments. We apply our framework to multidimensional generalizations of canonical models in insurance, regulation, and optimal taxation and show that it generates novel results.
Full text [pdf]
Monday 22 September 2014 17:00-18:15
MSE(106-112, boulevard de l'Hôpital - Salle 6ème étage)75647 PARIS cedex 13
SERGEI SEVERINOV (UBS, Visiting PSE) : Strategic Information Acquisition and Transmission
Full text [pdf]
Monday 22 September 2014 17:00-18:15
MSE(106-112, boulevard de l'Hôpital - Salle 6ème étage)75647 PARIS cedex 13
SERGEI SEVERINOV : Strategic Information Acquisition and Transmission
Full text [pdf]
Monday 16 June 2014 17:00-18:15
MSE (106-112 BOULEVARD DE L'HOPITAL- PARIS 75013) SALLE 114
FUCHS William (UC Berkeley) : Government Interventions in a Dynamic Market with Adverse Selection
Co-author : A. Skrzypacz
Full text [pdf]
Monday 2 June 2014 17:00-18:15
Maison des Sciences Économiques salle du 6ème
MATHEVET Laurent (NYU) : Axiomatic Behavior in Repeated Interactions
Abstract
Suppose that, in repeated interactions, players eventually engage in a pattern of action profiles, which we call a social convention. Do some social conventions seem more plausible than others? We answer axiomatically based on principles of rationality and efficient simplicity. After studying the complexity required by efficient simplicity, we characterize the axioms’ solutions. The main solution says that social conventions should be constant repetitions of a static Nash equilibrium, or such that players switch between two Pareto unranked profiles (across which they each change action). The paper also reports experimental evidence that supports our findings. This approach generalizes the standard frameworks of axiomatic bargaining (Nash(1950)) and of Harsanyi and Selten(1988). Among other things, it provides a testbed for selection arguments in repeated interactions: in some games, it takes remarkably little to reduce the multiplicity of outcomes and even get uniqueness.
Monday 26 May 2014 17:00-18:15
WAMBACH Achim (UNIVERSITY OF COLOGNE) : AUCTIONS VS. NEGOTIATIONS: THE CASE OF FAVORITISM
Co-author(s): VITALI GRETSCHKO & ACHIM WAMBACH
Full text [pdf]
Monday 19 May 2014 17:00-18:15
Campus Jourdan, bâtiment E, rez-de-chaussée, salle 101
BOARD Simon (UCLA) : A Reputational Theory of Firm Dynamics
Co-author(s) : Moritz Meyer-ter-Vehn
Abstract
We propose an industry lifecycle model in which each firm privately invests into its quality and thereby its reputation. Over time, both the firm and the market learn about the firm's evolving quality via infrequent breakthroughs. The firm can also exit if its value becomes negative, giving rise to selection within the industry. In a pure-strategy equilibrium, incentives are single-peaked: the firm shirks immediately following a breakthrough, works for intermediate levels of reputation and shirks again when it is about to exit. This investment behavior yields predictions for the distribution of firm productivity and the turnover rate. Finally, we compare the model to two variants : one in which the firm's investment is publicly observed, and a second where the firm has private information about its product quality.
Monday 12 May 2014 17:00-18:15
Campus Jourdan, bâtiment E, rez-de-chaussée, salle 101
SGROI Daniel (Warwick) : Explaining Attitudes towards Taxation
Co-author(s) : Anandi Mani & Sharun Mukand
Abstract
> Standard theory suggests that the rich would like to see lower tax rates, but also that individuals may have social preferences that are independent of their wealth which may in part govern attitudes towards taxation. More recently their have been two important contributions that may enable us to gain more insight into tax attitudes. First, theoretical work has discussed "self-serving biases" that enable individuals to distort their memories of events in ways that boost their utility. Second, empirical studies have found significant differences in tax attitudes which seem to correlate with attitudes towards the importance of luck in life. We merge these two ideas in a controlled laboratory experiment (involving in excess of 450 participants) that allows individuals to make money through effort and luck, and to select tax rates on the resulting earnings under different information treatments. We find strong evidence that (1) individuals care about the source of the wealth of those that are taxed; (2) the source of wealth of the tax-setter also matters a great deal and (3) individuals are willing to bias their attitudes in ways that benefit their own self-image. We thereby provide empirical support for the importance of the source of wealth (of the tax-payer and tax-setter) and the role of self-serving biases in establishing how individuals form their tax attitudes.
Monday 5 May 2014 17:00-18:15
Campus Jourdan, bâtiment E, rez-de-chaussée, salle 101
STEWART Colin (Toronto) : Perceiving Prospects Properly
Co-author(s) : Jakub Steiner
Monday 28 April 2014 17:00-18:15
Campus Jourdan, bâtiment E, rez-de-chaussée, salle 101
WEIBULL Jörgen (Stockholm) : TBA
Monday 31 March 2014 17:00-18:15
Campus Jourdan, bâtiment E, rez-de-chaussée, salle 101
VILLEVAL Marie-Claire (Gate) : Self Control and Intertemporal Choice: Evidence from Glucose and Depletion Interventions
Co-authors : Michael A. Kuhn (UC San Diego) et Peter Kuhn (UC Santa Barbara)
Full text [pdf]
Monday 24 March 2014 17:00-18:15
Campus Jourdan, bâtiment E, rez-de-chaussée, salle 101
SOBEL Joel (UC San Diego) : Persuasive Arguments
Abstract
Social Psychologists have identified a tendency for groups composed of like-minded individuals to make decisions that are more extreme, but biased in the same direction as decisions taken by individual members of the group. This tendency is a called the group-polarization phenomenon. One explanation for the phenomenon is the ``persuasive argument theory.'' Loosely, the persuasive argument theory asserts that individuals become more convinced on their view when they hear new arguments that support their position and that group deliberations bring out these arguments. I provide one formalization of this theory and investigate the extent to which the persuasive argument theory leads to polarization and conditions under which group decisions are not necessarily better than decisions made by group members. I argue that group polarization is not necessarily a sign of non-optimizing behavior and does not require persuasive arguments, but that either when there is a conflict of interest between decision makers or limits on the ability to communicate, novel arguments will receive disproportional weight in deliberations and may lead to biased group decision making.
Monday 17 March 2014 17:00-18:15
Campus Jourdan, bâtiment E, rez-de-chaussée, salle 101
GALICHON Alfred (Sciences Po) : Taxation and Sorting : The Second Tax Incidence Effect
Abstract
We study the effect of taxes on wages and sorting in a competitive matching market. Taxes not only affect equilibrium wages, they also potentially affect the sorting patterns, namely the matched partners of individuals at equilibrium. In a one-to-one matching models where workers (CEOs) are assigned to firms and where proportional taxes are levied on wages, we study the impact of taxes on wages and sorting. We show that the model with taxes can be reformulated as an fictional equivalent model without taxes. We use this equivalence to derive compact comparative statics results. We provide a theory of tax incidence where a change in the tax rate induces workers' and firms' surpluses to be affected by (1) the direct change in the tax rate (which has been called the "flypaper effect") (2) the change in equilibrium wages (which is the classical tax incidence effect, or price incidence effect) and (3) the change in the sorting pattern (which we call the "second tax incidence effect", or sorting incidence effect). We provide an identification strategy for this model, and we give preliminary evidence that the second incidence effect is significant.
Monday 10 March 2014 17:00-18:15
Campus Jourdan, bâtiment E, rez-de-chaussée, salle 101
HALAC Marina (Columbia) : Managerial Attention and Worker Engagement
co-author(s) : Andrea Prat
Abstract
We study a dynamic agency problem with two-sided moral hazard: the worker chooses whether to exert effort or shirk; the manager chooses whether to invest in paying attention to the worker's performance. In equilibrium the worker uses past recognition to infer managerial attention. An engagement trap arises: absent recent recognition, both worker effort and managerial investment decrease, making a return to high productivity less likely as time passes. In a sample of ex-ante identical firms, firm performance, managerial quality, and worker engagement display heterogeneity across firms, positive correlation, and persistence over time.
Monday 3 March 2014 17:00-18:15
Campus Jourdan, bâtiment E, rez-de-chaussée, salle 101
UNVER Utku (Boston College) : Welfare and Equity Consequences of Transplant Organ Allocation Policies
Co-author(s) : Tayfun Sönmez
Abstract
Within the last decade kidney exchange became a mainstream paradigm to increase the number of kidneys transplants. However, compatible pairs do not participate in exchange and full benefit from exchange can only be realized if they participate. In this paper, we propose a new incentive scheme that relies on incentivizing participation of compatible pairs in exchange via an insurance for the patient for a second future renal failure. Welfare and equity analysis of this scheme is conducted and compared with welfare and equity outcomes of live donation and live donor organ exchange. The potential role of such an incentive scheme to strengthen the national kidney exchange system is also presented.
Full text [pdf]
Monday 17 February 2014 17:00-18:15
Campus Jourdan, bâtiment E, rez-de-chaussée, salle 101
BOHREN Aislinn (U. Penn) : Spot Market Incentives: Optimal Contract Design with Unverifiable Output
Co-author(s) : J. Aislinn Bohren and Troy Kravitz
Abstract
This paper studies an agency problem in which a firm employs workers to perform a task. The worker selects an effort level that determines the probability that she completes the task successfully. The firm cannot directly observe effort or verify whether the task is successful. To encourage effort, the firm hires several workers to perform the same task and bases compensation on the degree to which the workers' output agrees. The setting diers from traditional agency theory along two dimensions: no signal about whether eort was exerted is available, and the firm is unable to threaten workers with negative wage payments. In the optimal mechanism, the firm endogenously monitors workers with nontrivial probability and bundles multiple tasks together to reduce the per-task cost of monitoring. By assigning more tasks to each worker and conditioning wage payment for any task on satisfactory performance on all tasks, the firm approximates its first-best payoffs even when firing and large punishments are unavailable.
Monday 10 February 2014 17:00-18:15
Campus Jourdan, bâtiment E, rez-de-chaussée, salle 101
LEVINE David (EUI, Florence) : Conict, Evolution, Hegemony, and the Power of the State
Co-author(s) : Salvatore Modica
Abstract
In a model of evolution driven by conict between societies more powerful states have an advantage. When the inuence of outsiders is small we show that this results in a tendency to hegemony. In a simple example in which institutions dier in their exclusiveness we nd that these hegemonies will be ineciently extractive in the sense of having ineciently high taxes, high compensation for state ocials, and low welfare. The theory also predicts that they are most likely overthrown by fanatic bands who maximize power ignoring incentive constraints.
Monday 3 February 2014 17:00-18:15
Campus Jourdan, bâtiment E, rez-de-chaussée, salle 101
MENGEL Frederike (University of Essex) : An Experiment on Belief Formation in Networks
Abstract
We analyse belief formation in social networks in a laboratory experiment. Our 3 x 3 design varies the network structure and the amount of information agents have about it. Agents observe an imperfect private signal on the true state of the world and then repeatedly guess the true state, observing the guesses of their network neighbours in each period. Participants' individual choices are well explained by a model of naive learning, but not by Bayesian learning. Comparative statics regarding signal dispersion and the time it takes to reach a consensus are also in line with the naive model. The model predictions regarding whether a consensus is reached and whether the truth is learned are only partially reflected in the data. Changes in behaviour induced by the amount of information participants have about the network structure cannot be explained by the naive model at all. We then estimate a larger class of models and find that the most successful participants do account for correlations in neighbours' guesses (unlike the naive model suggests), place less weight on themselves compared to others, but increase the weight placed on themselves over time. We propose a simple belief formation model that reflects these properties and show that it does well when confronted with the data
Monday 27 January 2014 17:00-18:15
GOTTARDI Piero (EUI Florence) : Risk Sharing and Contagion in Networks
Co-author(s) : Antonio Cabrales and Fernando Vega Redondo
Full text [pdf]
Monday 20 January 2014 17:00-18:15
Campus Jourdan, bâtiment E, rez-de-chaussée, salle 101
WEILL Pierre-Olivier (UCLA) : The Market for OTC Derivatives
Co-author(s) : Andrew G. Atkeson & Andrea L. Eisfeldt
Full text [pdf]
Monday 13 January 2014 17:00-18:15
Campus Jourdan, bâtiment E, rez-de-chaussée, salle 101
MARIOTTI Thomas Mariotti (Toulouse School of Economics) : Researcher's Dilemma
co-authors: Catherine Bobtcheff and Jérôme Bolte
Abstract
We model academic competition as a game in which researchers fight for priority. Researchers privately experience breakthroughs and decide how long to let their ideas mature before making them public, thereby establishing priority. In a two-researcher, symmetric environment, the resulting preemption game has a unique equilibrium. We study how the shape of the breakthrough distribution affects equilibrium maturation delays. Making researchers better at discovering new ideas or at developing them has contrasted effects on the quality of research outputs. Finally, when researchers have different innovative abilities, speed of discovery and maturation of ideas are positively correlated in equilibrium.
Monday 6 January 2014 17:00-18:15
Campus Jourdan, bâtiment E, rez-de-chaussée, salle 101
TINN Katrin : *
Monday 16 December 2013 17:00-18:15
Maison des sciences économiques (MSE), 106 - 112 boulevard d
HORNER Johannes (Yale University) : Optimal Design for Social Learning
Co-author : Yeon-Koo Che
Abstract
The goal of a recommender system is to facilitate social learning about a product based on the experimentation by early users of the product. Without appropriating their social contribution, however, early users may lack the incentives to experiment on a product. The associated "cold start" could then result in a demise of a potentially valuable product and a collapse of the social learning. This paper studies design of the optimal recommender system focusing on this incentive problem and the pattern of dynamic social learning that emerges from the recommender system. The optimal design trades off fully transparent social learning to improve incentives for early experimentation, by selectively over-recommending a product in the early phase of the product release. Under the optimal scheme, experimentation occurs faster than under full transparency but slower than under the first-best optimum, and the rate of experimentation increases over an initial phase and lasts until the posterior becomes sufficiently bad in which case the recommendation stops along with experimentation on the product. Fully transparent recommendation may become optimal if the (socially- benevolent) designer does not observe the agents’ costs or the agents choose the timing of receiving a recommendation.
Full text [pdf]
Monday 9 December 2013 17:00-18:15
Maison des sciences économiques (MSE), 106 - 112 boulevard d
BOMMIER Antoine (ETH Zürich) : A Robust Approach to Risk Aversion : Disentangling Risk Aversion and Elasticity of Substitution without giving up Preference Monotonicity
co-author: François Le Grand
Abstract
We investigate whether the set of Kreps and Porteus (1978) preferences include classes of preferences that are stationary, monotonic with respect to first order stochastic dominance, and well-ordered in terms of risk aversion. We prove that the class of preference s introduced by Hansen and Sargent (1995) in their robustness analysis is the only one that fulfills these properties. The paper therefore suggests a shift from the traditional approach to studying the role of risk aversion in recursive problems. We also provide applications, in which we discuss the impact of risk aversion on asset pricing and risk sharing.
Full text [pdf]
Monday 2 December 2013 17:00-18:15
Maison des sciences économiques (MSE), 106 - 112 boulevard d
HASHIMOTO Tadashi (TSE) : The Generalized Random Priority Mechanism with Budgets
Abstract
This paper studies allocation problems with and without monetary transfers, such as multi-unit auctions, school choice, and course assignment. For this class of problems, we introduce a generalized random priority mechanism with budgets (GRP). This mechanism is always ex post incentive compatible and feasible. Moreover, as the market grows large, this mechanism can approximate any incentive compatible mechanism in the corresponding continuum economy. In particular, GRP can be used to approximate efficient and envy-free allocations, while preserving incentive compatibility and feasibility.
Monday 25 November 2013 17:00-18:15
MSE-106-112, blv de l'Hôpital - 75013 Paris ( room 114)
TRÖGER Thomas (Mannheim University) : Transparency or Opaqueness: The Optimal Design of Signals
Co-author(s) : Timofiy Mylovanov (University of Pittsburgh)
Abstract
Many economic and political mechanisms and institutions are designed by parties who hold relevant private information that may be signalled through the mechanism. The designer may have incentives to conceal her information at the moment of proposing a mechanism, while keeping the discretion to participate in the mechanism herself. For example, sales contracts are sometimes opaque concerning what exactly is sold or at what price, and labor contracts typically do not specify wage or career paths in advance. Similar discretionary elements may be found in many regulation schemes. Earlier approaches by Maskin-Tirole and Myerson have assumed that arbitrary mechanisms can be used as signals, with no design restriction at all. On the other hand, classical signaling games (like Spence's) take a (typically low-dimensional) set of signals as exogenously given while the possible design of signals is ignored. As a unifying property that bridges the gap between these two extremes, we propose that any finite collection of signals may be composed into a new signal. Our approach yields existence and characterization results that open the door to a broad range of applications.
Monday 18 November 2013 17:00-18:15
MSE-106-112, blv de l'Hôpital - 75013 Paris (room 114)
MORELLI Massimo (Columbia University) : Reelection through Division
Co-author(s) : Richard Van Weelden
Abstract
We provide a positive analysis of effort allocation by a politician facing reelection when voters are uncertain about the politician’s preferences on a divisive issue. We then use this framework to derive normative conclusions on the desirability of transparency and other institutional design features. There is a pervasive incentive to “posture” by over-providing effort to pursue divisive policies, even if all voters would strictly prefer to have a consensus policy implemented. As such, the desire of politicians to convince voters that their preferences are aligned with the majority can lead them to choose strictly pare to dominated effort allocations. Transparency over the politicians’ effort choices can either mitigate or re-enforce the distortions depending on the strength of politicians’ office motivation and the efficiency of institutions. When re-election concerns are paramount, and executive institutions are strong, transparency about effort choices can be bad for both incentivizing politicians and for sorting.
Monday 14 October 2013 17:00-18:15
MSE-106-112, blv de l'Hôpital - 75013 Paris
JACKSON Matthew : *
Monday 7 October 2013 17:00-18:15
Maison des sciences économiques (MSE), 106 - 112 boulevard d
FORGES Françoise (U. Paris-Dauphine) : Bayesian repeated games
Co-author(s): Antoine Salomon
Abstract
Bayesian repeated games Françoise Forges and Antoine Salomon(Paris-Dauphine) Abstract : The Folk theorem characterizes the (subgame perfect) Nash equilibrium payoffs of an undiscounted or discounted infinitely repeated game - with fully informed, patient players - as the feasible individually rational payoffs of the one-shot game. To which extent does the result still hold when every player privately knows his own payoffs ? Under standard assumptions, the Nash equilibria of the Bayesian infinitely repeated game without discounting are payoff equivalent to tractable separating equilibria and can be achieved as interim cooperative solutions of the initial Bayesian game. This characterization does not apply to discounted games with sufficiently patient players. In a class of public good games, the set of Nash equilibrium payoffs of the undiscounted game can be empty, while limit (perfect Bayesian) Nash equilibrium payoffs of the discounted game, as players become infinitely patient, do exist. These equilibria share some features with the ones of multi-sided reputation models.
Monday 30 September 2013 17:00-18:15
Maison des sciences économiques (MSE), 106 - 112 boulevard d
KETS Willemien (Northwestern) : Finite Depth of Reasoning and Equilibrium Play in Games with Incomplete Information
Full text [pdf]
Monday 23 September 2013 17:00-18:15
Maison des sciences économiques (MSE), 106 - 112 boulevard d
VIVES Xavier (IESE Business School) : Endogenous Public Information and Welfare in Market Games
Full text [pdf]
Monday 16 September 2013 17:00-18:15
Campus Jourdan, bâtiment E, rez-de-chaussée, salle 101
WOLINSKY Asher (Northwestern) : A Common Value Auction with bidder Solicitation
Monday 17 June 2013 17:00-18:30
MSE
LIZZERI Alessandro (NYU) : Government Policy with Time Inconsistent Voters
Monday 10 June 2013 17:00-18:30
MSE - salle S17
MACLEOD Bentley (Columbia University ) : Diagnosis and Unnecessary Procedure Use: Evidence from C-Section
Monday 3 June 2013 17:00-18:30
MSE sixth floor
RUBINSTEIN Ariel (Tel Aviv University and NYU) : A Model of Persuasion with Boundedly Rational Agents
Co-author(s) : Jacob Glazer
Monday 27 May 2013 17:00-18:30
The session was canceled.
CHOI Syngjoo (University College London) : TBA
Tuesday 21 May 2013 17:00-18:30
CHASSANG Sylvain (Princeton University) : Corruption, Intimidation and Whistleblowing: A Theory of Inference from Unveriable Reports
Co-author(s) : Gerard Padro i Miquel (LSE)
Monday 13 May 2013 17:00-18:30
SONMEZ Tayfun (Boston College) : The Demise of Walk Zones in Boston: Priorities vs. Precedence in School Choice
Co-auteurs : Umut M. Dur, Scott Duke Kominers and Parag A. Pathak
Abstract
School choice plans in many cities grant students higher priority for some (but not all) seats at their neighborhood schools. This paper demonstrates how the precedence order, i.e. the order in which different types of seats are filled by applicants, has quantitative effects on distributional objectives comparable to priorities in the deferred acceptance algorithm. While Boston's school choice plan gives priority to neighborhood applicants for half of each school's seats, the intended effect of this policy is lost because of the precedence order. Despite widely held impressions about the importance of neighborhood priority, the outcome of Boston's implementation of a 50-50 school split is nearly identical to a system without neighborhood priority. We formally establish that either increasing the number of neighborhood priority seats or lowering the precedence order positions of neighborhood seats at a school have the same effect : an increase in the number of neighborhood students assigned to the school. We then show that in Boston a reversal of precedence with no change in priorities covers almost three-quarters of the range between 0% and 100% neighborhood priority. Therefore, decisions about precedence are inseparable from decisions about priorities. Transparency about these issues—in particular, how precedence unintentionally undermined neighborhood priority—led to the abandonment of neighborhood priority in Boston in 2013.
Full text [pdf]
Monday 22 April 2013 17:00-18:30
DHILLON Amrita (Warwick University) : Status, Incentives and Corruption
Co-author(s): Antonio Nicolo
Abstract
We re-examine the hypothesis that increasing compensation to public sector officials reduces corruption, defined as bribe-taking. We introduce heterogeneity among agents on the dimension of how much they are motivated by "status" or prestige of a profession vs. purely monetary compensation. We show that increasing wages in this setting may increase corruption under realistic conditions on parameters. Using "prestige" as a choice variable for policy may have reinforcing effects in reducing corruption: it reduces both bribe taking behavior as well as improves the selection of workers in the public sector. Media, on the other hand, by emphasizing the "bad news” about corruption may worsen corruption reducing the status of a profession. Finally, we show that in our setting the use of non-monetary bonus, like medals, may improve both the quality of the officials and their honesty.
Monday 15 April 2013 17:00-18:30
SEIDL Adam (Berkeley & CEU Budapest) : Treasure Hunt: Social Learning in the Field
Co-author(s): Markus Mobius and Tuan Phan)
Abstract
We seed individuals in a real-world social network with information about quiz questions to experimentally measure the effectiveness of social learning. Using data on both the pre-existing social network and the actual conversation network, we find strong evidence that people learn from direct and indirect friends, but also that—unlike in standard models—information transmission is imperfect. We then compare two theories of social learning: a DeGroot-style model in which people double-count signals that reach them through multiple paths, and a “Streams” model in which people tag the source of information and hence do not double-count. In the conversation network, the weight a decision maker attaches to the signal of a person increases in the number of paths between them when the person is an indirect friend, but not when she is a direct friend. This fact is consistent with the Streams model in which multiple paths only increase the weight by increasing the transmission probability when—like with an indirect informer—transmission is imperfect. Structural and reduced-form estimates which exploit this and other variation generally support the Streams model combined with probabilistic transmission in our setting.
Monday 8 April 2013 17:00-18:30
RIEDL Arno (Maastricht) : Indecisiveness under Uncertainty: Incomplete Preferences in Disguise
Co auteur : Elena Cettolin (Maastricht University)
Monday 25 March 2013 17:00-18:30
DOS SANTOS FERREIRA Rodolphe (Université Strasbourg) : Household behavior and individual autonomy: An extended Lindahl mechanism
Co-author(s): Claude d'Aspremont
Monday 18 March 2013 17:00-18:30
OTTAVIANI Marco (Bocconi) : 1) Research and the Approval Process 2) Strategic Research Bias
1)Co-author(s): Emeric Henry 2)Co-author(s) Peter N. Sorensen
Monday 18 February 2013 17:00-18:30
CONDORELLI Daniele (Essex) : Selling through Referrals
Coauteurs : A. Galeotti et V. Skreta
Abstract
We introduce referrals in a model of intermediated trade with asymmetric information. A seller has an object for sale and can reach buyers only through intermediaries, who also have privileged information about the valuations of the buyers. Intermediaries can refer their buyers to the seller and release information in exchange for a referral payment, but can also choose to mediate the transaction by buying the object and reselling it. We prove that, whenever referral fees are positive, intermediaries always refer all their buyers and report all their information to the seller. Hence, referrals overcome the profit loss due to double marginalization. The gain in profits is shared between seller and intermediaries depending on who has control of the referral. We also identify environments with additional market frictions in which intermediated trade coexists with referrals.
Monday 11 February 2013 17:00-18:30
ELLIGSEN Tore (Stockholm School of Economics) : Paying for Staying: Compensation Contracts and the Retention Motive
Abstract
Talented employees may leave the Örm in order to work elsewhere. Focusing on the portability of employeesíresources, we develop a model in which compensation contracts are designed to prevent ine¢ cient departure. The model rationalizes the widespread use of áat salaries in combination with non-indexed stock options and is consistent with observed di§erences in compensation contracts across individuals, Örms, industries, and countries
Full text [pdf]
Monday 4 February 2013 17:00-18:30
MUKERJI Sujoy (University of Oxford) : Relevance and Symmetry
Co-auteurs : Peter Klibanoff and Kyoungwon Seo
Abstract
This paper provides a method to identify components of preference reflecting information and those reflecting only tastes. Important to this method is the identication of a unique set of revealed probability assignments (called relevant measures) from preferences over acts. We characterize these relevant measures and show where they appear in representations of preferences. This method works for a large set of preference models provided that the state space is treated as if it had a symmetric, "i.i.d. with unknown parameters," structure. Relevant measures are shown to characterize revealed information and to help in identifying taste components of preference representations. We apply our findings to four well-known representations of ambiguity-sensitive preferences: the -MEU model, the smooth ambiguity model, the extended MEU with contraction model and the vector expected utility model. For each representation, the theory identies both the set of relevant measures and components of the representation that reflect only tastes.
Full text [pdf]
Monday 28 January 2013 17:00-18:30
HARSTAD Bard (Northwestern University) : The Market for Conservation and other Hostages
Abstract
This paper introduces the notion of "conservation goods" and shows how they differ fundamentally from traditional goods in dynamic settings. A conservation good (such as a tropical forest) is owned by a seller who is tempted to consume (or cut) it, but a buyer benefits more if the good is conserved. The buyer is unwilling to pay as long as the seller conserves, but the seller conserves only if the buyer is expected to buy. This contradiction implies that the market for conservation cannot be efficient, and conservation ends at a positive rate. Conservation is less likely if many buyers would benefit from it or if consumption has a low value. A rental market is similarly inefficient, and it dominates a sales market only if the value of conservation is low, the consumption value high, and if remote protection is costly. The theory explains why optimal conservation often fails and why conservation abroad is rented, while domestic conservation is bought
Full text [pdf]
Monday 21 January 2013 16:30-18:00
KOSZEGI Botond (Berkeley) : The Market for Deceptive Products
co auteurs Paul Heidhues and Takeshi Murooka Attention : SEANCE A 16H30 GRANDE SALLE DE JOURDAN
Full text [pdf]
Monday 14 January 2013 17:00-18:30
LEGROS Patrick (Université Libre de Bruxelles) : Mismatch, Rematch and Investment
Monday 7 January 2013 17:00-18:30
BAILLON Aurélien (Erasmus University Rotterdam) : Prudence (and more) with respect to Uncertainty and Ambiguity
Monday 17 December 2012 17:00-18:30
Maison des sciences économiques (MSE), 106 - 112 boulevard d
MYLOVANOV Tymofiy (University of Pennsylvania) : Mechanism Design by an Informed Principal: The Quasi-Linear Private-Values Case
Co-auteur : Thomas Tröger
Full text [pdf]
Monday 10 December 2012 17:00-18:30
Maison des sciences économiques (MSE), 106 - 112 boulevard d
BEN PORATH Elchanan (Hebrew University of Jerusalem) : Optimal Allocation with Costly Verification
Co-author(s) : Eddie Dekel and Bart Lipman
Monday 3 December 2012 17:00-18:30
Maison des Sciences Economiques (106-112, bouleverd de l'Hôp
BIERBRAUER Felix (Université de Cologne) : Mechanism Design and Intentions
Full text [pdf]
Monday 26 November 2012 17:00-18:30
Maison des Sciences Economiques (106-112, boulevard de l'Hôp
KRÄHMER Daniel (Bonn Universität) : Optimal Sequential Delegation
Full text [pdf]
Monday 12 November 2012 17:00-18:30
Maison des sciences économiques (MSE), 106 - 112 boulevard d
HESKI Bar-Isaac (Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto) : Reputation for a Servant of Two Masters
Co-auteur Joyee Ded
Monday 22 October 2012 17:00-18:30
Maison des sciences économiques (MSE), 106 - 112 boulevard d
KONSTANTINOS E. Zachariadis (London School of Economics) : *
Monday 15 October 2012 17:00-18:30
Maison des sciences économiques (MSE), 106 - 112 boulevard d
ROGERS Brian (Northwestern University) : "Symmetric play in repeated allocation games"
Co-auteur : Christoph Kuzmics, Thomas Palfrey
Abstract
We study symmetric play in a class of repeated games when players are patient. We show that, while the use of symmetric strategy profiles essentially does not restrict the set of feasible payoffs, the set of equilibrium payoffs is an interesting proper subset of the feasible and individually rational set. We also provide a theory of how rational individuals play these games, identifying particular strategies as focal through the considerations of Pareto optimality and simplicity. We report experiments that support many aspects of this theory.
Full text [pdf]
Monday 8 October 2012 17:00-18:30
MSE - 106-112, boulevard d'Hôpital - Salle 6ème - 75013 Pari
INDERST Roman (Universität Frankfurt) : Tailored Advertising and Consumer Privacy
Monday 1 October 2012 17:00-18:30
Maison des Sciences Economiques-Université de Paris I (106,
RENOU Ludovic (University of Essex) : "Repeated Nash Implementation"
Monday 24 September 2012 17:00-18:30
Maison des sciences économiques (MSE), 106 - 112 boulevard d
DASGUPTA Amil (LSE) : "The Wall Street Walk when Blockholders Compete for Flows"
Co-auteur : Giorgia Piacentino
Abstract
An important theoretical literature argues that the threat of exit can be an effective governance device when the blockholder is a principal. However, many blockholders are money managers. Different types of money managers care to different degrees about investor flows. We show that when blockholders are sufficiently flow-motivated, exit will fail as a disciplining device, while if they are sufficiently profit-motivated, it is effective. This generates testable implications across different classes of funds. We show that the threat of exit complements shareholder voice, and thus provide an explanation for the observed variation in how different types of funds use voice.
Full text [pdf]
Monday 17 September 2012 17:00-18:30
Maison des sciences économiques (MSE), 106 - 112 boulevard d
STRAUSZ Roland (Humboldt-Universität Berlin) : The Benefits of Sequential Screening
Monday 18 June 2012 17:00-18:30
MSE - Salle 17
ASHEIM Geir (Université d'Oslo) : Epistemically stable strategy sets
Co-author(s): Jörgen Weibull et Mark Voorneveld
Monday 21 May 2012 17:00-18:30
LEBRUN Bernard (University of York, Canada) : Revenue-superior variants of the second-price auction
Monday 14 May 2012 17:00-18:30
NEHRING Klaus (UCDavis) : Majority Rule in the Absence of a Majority
Co-auteur : Marcus Pivato
Full text [pdf]
Monday 7 May 2012 17:00-18:30
PRAT Julien (Université de Barcelona) : Dynamic Contacts when Agent's Quality is Unknown
Co-author(s): Boyan Jovanovic
Full text [pdf]
Monday 30 April 2012 17:00-18:30
NAGEL Rose-Marie (UPF-ICREA) : Assessing strategic Risk with fMRI
Co-author(s): Giorgio Coricelli (CIMeC, U. Trento, CNRS-Bron), Andrea Brovelli (CNRS-Marseille), Frank Heinemann (TU-Berlin)
Abstract
Neuroscientists and economists have recently begun to study jointly how strategic thinking regulates human individual and social behaviour. In this paper we measure strategic uncertainty in coordination games with strategic complementarities (CC) and substitutes(CS) in 2 person and large groups and risk within lottery setups, all framed in a similar way. The question we are addressing is whether the neural systems mediating decisions in individual and social context are distinct. More precisely, we are trying to identify whether risk and strategic uncertainty are mediated by different brain networks. We found enhanced activity in bilateral anterior insula related to outcome uncertainty. We see clear differences in brain activity when comparing risk averse subjects and risk loving subjects playing lotteries and CC-games (stug-hunt games), but not when playing CS-games (entry games). This complements our behavioral data which shows a strong correlation between risk attitudes and CC-games, but no correlation between risk attitudes and CS-games. Activity in the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), superior temporal sulcus, temporo-parietal junction, and posterior cingulated cortex was related to playing in stug hunt games and entry games. Increasing strategic uncertainty was correlated with neural activity in the mPFC. Our results suggest that a common neural substrate (anterior insula) is shared in the individual and social contexts for the resolution of uncertainty. Moreover, the pattern of activity in the mPFC revealed the fundamental role of this area in strategic reasoning (Coricelli and Nagel, 2009, PNAS).
Monday 23 January 2012 17:00-18:30
PIKETTY Thomas (PSE) : A Theory of Optimal Capital Taxation
Co-author(s): E. Saez, (Berkeley)
Full text [pdf]
Monday 16 January 2012 17:00-19:00
JIN Ginger (University of Maryland) : *
Monday 9 January 2012 17:00-18:30
DESSEIN Wouter (Columbia Business School) : Rational Inattention and Organizational Focus
Co-authors : Andrea Galeotti & Tano Santos
Monday 12 December 2011 17:00-18:30
Maison des Sciences Economiques-PARIS 1- Salle S/17 (106, bo
ROCHET Jean-Charles (U.Zürich et TSE ) : A theoretical foundation for the stakeholder corporation
Full text [pdf]
Monday 5 December 2011 17:00-18:30
Maison des Sciences Économiques (MSE) - Salle 6ème - (106 -
BOLTON Patrick (Columbia University) : Cream Skimming in Financial Markets
Co-author(s): Tano Santos & Jose Scheinkman
Monday 28 November 2011 17:00-18:30
Maison des Sciences Économiques (MSE) - Salle Salle 6ème - (
HAERINGER Guillaume (Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona) : Two-Sided Matching with One-Sided Data
Joint with Vincent Iehlé
Monday 21 November 2011 17:00-18:30
Maison des Sciences Economiques-PARIS 1- Salle S/17 (106-112
ELIAZ Kfir (Brown University) : On the strategic disclosure of feasible options in bargaining
joint with Geoffroy de Clippel
Full text [pdf]
Monday 14 November 2011 17:00-18:30
Maison des Sciences Économiques (MSE) - Salle Salle 6ème - (
KASTL Jakub (Stanford University) : *
Monday 7 November 2011 17:00-18:30
Maison des Sciences Économiques (MSE) - Salle Salle 6ème - (
SAKOVICS Jozsef (University of Edinburgh) : The marginal utility of money: A modern Marshallian approach to consumer choice
joint avec Daniel Friedman
Full text [pdf]
Monday 31 October 2011 17:00-18:30
Maison des Sciences Économiques (MSE) - Salle Salle 6ème - (
*
Monday 17 October 2011 17:00-18:30
Maison des Sciences Économiques (MSE) - Salle 6ème - (106 -
PAVONI Nicola : Optimal Income Taxation with Asset Accumulation
Full text [pdf]
Monday 10 October 2011 17:00-18:30
Maison des Sciences Économiques (MSE), Salle S/17, 106 - 11
BLAVATSKYY Pavlo (University of Innsbrück) : Stronger Utility
Monday 3 October 2011 17:00-18:30
Maison des Sciences Économiques (MSE), - Salle 6ème - (106 -
YAMASHITA Takuro (Toulouse School of Economics) : A Necessary Condition for Robust Implementation: Theory and Applications
Full text [pdf]
Monday 26 September 2011 17:00-18:30
MSE-PARIS 1- Salle 6ème (106, boulevard de l'Hôpital - 75013
BICH Philippe (Paris 1, MSE) : Sharing Rules Equilibria in Discontinuous Games
joint avec Rida Laraki
Monday 19 September 2011 17:00-18:30
Maison des Sciences Économiques (MSE) - Salle S/17 (106 - 11
KUHN Kai-Uwe (University of Michigan and CEPR) : Communication, Renegotiation, and the Scope for Collusion
Full text [pdf]
Monday 23 May 2011 17:30-19:00
VAYANOS Dimitri (LSE) : An Institutional Theory of Momentum and Reversal
Co-auteur(s) : Paul Woolley
Abstract
We propose a rational theory of momentum and reversal based on delegated portfolio man- agement. Flows between investment funds are triggered by changes in fund managers’ efficiency, which investors either observe directly or infer from past performance. Momentum arises if fund flows exhibit inertia, and because rational prices do not fully adjust to reflect future flows. Re- versal arises because flows push prices away from fundamental values. Besides momentum and reversal, fund flows generate comovement, lead-lag effects and amplification, with all effects being larger for assets with high idiosyncratic risk. Managers’ concern with commercial risk can make prices more volatile. Keywords: Asset pricing, delegated portfolio management, momentum, reversal
Monday 16 May 2011 17:30-19:00
KRANTON Rachel (Duke University) : Redistribution, Ideology, and Identity
Abstract
Abstract: This paper presents a novel experiment of redistribution in social settings. While participants on average act fairly, the within subject design reveals a range of individual behavior. Behavior is correlated with subjects, political ideology, as distinct from subjects, political identity. When separated into groups, identity comes to the fore. Subjects redistribute significantly less to people in other groups. In a political group treatment, affiliates of the Democratic and Republican parties display significantly less fair and more competitive behavior towards each other than non-party affiliates. The experiment finds support for premise that social identity affects redistribution and decision-making.
Monday 9 May 2011 17:30-19:00
MYATT David P. (Nuffield College) : On the Rational Choice Theory of Voter Turnout
Abstract
I consider a two-candidate election in which there is aggregate uncertainty about the popularity of each candidate, where voting is costly, and where participants are instrumentally motivated. The unique equilibrium predicts substantial turnout under reasonable parameter configurations, and greater turnout for the apparent underdog offsets the expected advantage of the perceived leader. I also present clear predictions about the response of turnout and the election outcome to various parameters, including the importance of the election; the cost of voting; the perceived popularity of each candidate; and the accuracy of pre-election information sources, such as opinion polls.
Full text [pdf]
Monday 2 May 2011 17:30-19:00
STOLE Lars (University of Chicago) : Public Delegated Agency Games
Co-auteur(s) : David Martimort
Full text [pdf]
Monday 4 April 2011 17:30-19:00
RADY Sven (University of Munich) : Strongly Symmetric Equilibria in Bandit Games
Monday 28 March 2011 17:30-19:00
GOTTARDI Piero (European University Institute) : Ramsey Asset Taxation Under Asymmetric Information
Co-auteur(s) : Nicola Pavoni
Full text [pdf]
Monday 21 March 2011 17:30-19:00
GOEREE Jacob (Zurich) : Spectrum Auction Design
Monday 14 March 2011 17:30-19:00
MORRIS Stephen (Princeton University) : Correlated Equilibrium and Incomplete Information
Co-auteur(s) : Dirk Bergemann
Monday 7 March 2011 17:00-18:30
HERINGS Jean-Jacques (Maastricht University) : Transferable utility games with uncertainty
Co-auteur(s) : Helga Habis
Full text [pdf]
Monday 28 February 2011 17:00-18:30
GARY-BOBO Robert (CREST-INSEE) : Strikes and slowdown in a theory of relational contracts
co-auteur(s) : Touria Jaaidane
Full text [pdf]
Monday 14 February 2011 17:00-18:30
ARYAL Gaurab (Australian National University) : Identication of Insurance Models with Multidimensional Screening
co-écrit avec Isabelle Perrigne et Quang Vuong
Full text [pdf]
Monday 7 February 2011 17:00-18:30
PETERS Mike (University of British Columbia, Vancouver) : On the revelations principle and reciprocal mechanisms in competing mechnism games
Full text [pdf]
Monday 31 January 2011 17:00-18:30
NOCKE Volker (University of Mannheim) : Merger Policy with Merger Choice
Co-auteur(s) : Michael D. Whinston.
Full text [pdf]
Monday 24 January 2011 17:00-18:30
TAKAHASHI Saturo (Princeton University) : Interdependent Preferences and Strategic Distinguishability
co-auteur(s) : Dirk Bergemann & Stephen Morris
Full text [pdf]
Monday 17 January 2011 17:00-18:30
TOMALA Tristan (HEC ) : Mechanism Design and Communication Networks
Co-auteur(s): Ludovic Renou
Full text [pdf]
Monday 13 December 2010 17:00-18:30
SOBEL Joel (UCSD) : Markets and Other-Regarding Preferences
Full text [pdf]
Monday 6 December 2010 17:00-18:30
KALAI Ehud (Northwestern University) : A Cooperative Value for Bayesian Games: A first best efficient solution for strategic games with asymmetric information
joint work with Adam T. Kalai
Full text [pdf]
Monday 29 November 2010 17:00-18:30
HELLWIG Christian (Toulouse School of Economics) : Information Aggregation and Investment Decisions
Co-auteur(s) : : Elias Albagli & Aleh Tsyvinski
Monday 22 November 2010 17:00-18:30
KANDORI Michihiro (Université de Tokyo) : Towards a Belief-Based Theory of Repeated Games with Private Monitoring
joint with Ichiro Obara
Full text [pdf]
Friday 22 October 2010 17:00-18:30
KANDORI Michihiro (Université de Tokyo) : Towards a Belief-Based Theory of Repeated Games with Private Monitoring
joint with Ichiro Obara
Full text [pdf]
Monday 18 October 2010 17:00-18:30
CHAMLEY Christophe (PSE) : Self-fulfilling traps with money as a medium of exchange
Full text [pdf]
Monday 27 September 2010 17:00-18:30
LAVI Ron (Israel Institute of Technology) : Side-Communication Yields Eciency of Ascending Auctions: The Two-Items Case
joint with Sigal Oren
Full text [pdf]
Monday 20 September 2010 17:00-18:30
KOJIMA Fujito (Stanford University) : Improving Efficiency in Matching Markets with Regional Caps: The Case of the Japan Residency Matching Program
Co-auteur(s) : Yuichiro Kamada
Full text [pdf]
Monday 14 June 2010 17:00-18:30
Cité Universisitaire, Fondation Victor Lyon- 27 bd Jourdan 7
LEVIN Dan (Ohio-State University) : Can Relaxation of Beliefs Rationalize the Winner’s Curse? An Experimental Study
Co-auteur(s) : Asen Ivanov & Muriel Niederle
Full text [pdf]
Monday 24 May 2010 17:00-18:30
WEYL Glen (Harvard) : *
Monday 10 May 2010 17:00-18:30
The session was canceled.
KALAI Ehud (Northwestern) : *
Monday 3 May 2010 17:00-18:30
BASHKAR V. (UCL) : *
Monday 12 April 2010 17:00-18:30
BIGLAISER Gary : *
Monday 29 March 2010 17:00-18:30
KORIYAMA Yukio (Ecole Polytechnique) : Price competition in the market for lemons
Co-auteur(s) : Mark Voorneveld & Jorgen Weibull.
Monday 22 March 2010 17:00-18:30
MEZZETTI Claudio (University of Warwick) : Manipulative Disclosure
Monday 15 March 2010 17:00-18:30
CANTILLON Estelle (Ecares) : *
Monday 8 March 2010 17:00-18:30
FEVRIER Philippe (CREST) : *
Monday 15 February 2010 17:00-18:30
SAMUELSON Larry (YALE) : *
Monday 14 December 2009 17:00-18:30
GROMB Denis (INSEAD) : Financially Constrained Arbitrage and Cross-Market Contagion
Full text [pdf]
Monday 7 December 2009 17:00-18:30
ESTEBAN Joan (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona) : Redistributive Taxation and Public Expenditure
co-authored with Sanghamitra Bandyopadhyay
Full text [pdf]
Monday 30 November 2009 17:00-18:30
POUGET Sebastien (Toulouse School of Economics) : Rational and irrational bubbles: an experiment
Full text [pdf]
Monday 23 November 2009 17:00-18:30
NEWMAN Andrew (Boston University) : Loopholes: Social Learning and the Evolution of Contract Form (with P. Jehiel).
Monday 16 November 2009 17:00-18:30
SKRETA Vasiliki (NYU, Stern) : What to put on the table
Monday 26 October 2009 17:00-18:30
PARK In-Uck (University of Bristol) : Seller Reputation and Trust in Pre-Trade Communication
Co-auteur(s) : Bruno Jullien
Abstract
It is shown that if there is adverse selection on seller's ability in experience goods market, credible communication can be sustained by reputation motives in spite of the inherent conflict of interests between sellers and buyers. In the absence of "commitment" types, reputation motives are explained as a consequence of equilibrium interplay between the market's perception on a seller's ability to deliver quality and the level of trust it places on the information he provides. Moreover, reputation motives do not disappear even after the seller's ability is revealed. This model is applied to examine the extent to which consumer rating systems may discipline sellers in honestly informing buyers about the quality of their product. Also analyzed is the im- pact of the possibility that sellers may restart as new traders by obtaining new identities. (JEL Codes: C73, D82, D83, L14) Keywords: cheap talk, consumer rating system, reputation, trust.
Full text [pdf]
Monday 26 October 2009 17:00-18:30
PARK In-Uck (University of Bristol) : Seller Reputation and Trust in Pre-Trade Communication
Co-auteur(s) : Bruno Jullien
Abstract
It is shown that if there is adverse selection on seller's ability in experience goods market, credible communication can be sustained by reputation motives in spite of the inherent conflict of interests between sellers and buyers. In the absence of "commitment" types, reputation motives are explained as a consequence of equilibrium interplay between the market's perception on a seller's ability to deliver quality and the level of trust it places on the information he provides. Moreover, reputation motives do not disappear even after the seller's ability is revealed. This model is applied to examine the extent to which consumer rating systems may discipline sellers in honestly informing buyers about the quality of their product. Also analyzed is the im- pact of the possibility that sellers may restart as new traders by obtaining new identities. (JEL Codes: C73, D82, D83, L14) Keywords: cheap talk, consumer rating system, reputation, trust.
Full text [pdf]
Monday 19 October 2009 17:00-18:30
ROTH Alvin (Harvard University) : Kidney Exchange: recent developments and open questions
Monday 19 October 2009 17:00-18:30
ROTH Alvin (Harvard University) : Kidney Exchange: recent developments and open questions
Monday 12 October 2009 17:00-18:30
MANEA Mihai (MIT) : Bargaining in Stationary Networks
Monday 12 October 2009 17:00-18:30
MANEA Mihai (MIT) : Bargaining in Stationary Networks
Monday 5 October 2009 17:00-18:30
GHATAK Maitreesh (LSE ) : The de Soto Effect
Co-auteur(s) : Tim Besley
Full text [pdf]
Monday 5 October 2009 17:00-18:30
GHATAK Maitreesh (LSE ) : The de Soto Effect
Co-auteur(s) : Tim Besley
Full text [pdf]
Monday 28 September 2009 17:00-18:30
ELLINGSEN Tore (Stockholm School of Economics) : Bilateral Bargaining with Durable Commitments
Monday 28 September 2009 17:00-18:30
ELLINGSEN Tore (Stockholm School of Economics) : Bilateral Bargaining with Durable Commitments
Monday 8 June 2009 17:00-18:30
LIZZERI Alessandro (New-York University) : Sequential deliberation
Monday 8 June 2009 17:00-18:30
LIZZERI Alessandro (New-York University) : Sequential deliberation
Monday 8 June 2009 17:00-18:30
LIZZERI Alessandro (New-York University) : Sequential deliberation
Monday 25 May 2009 17:00-18:30
HARSTAD Bart (Northwestern University) : The Dynamics of Climate Agreements
Full text [pdf]
Monday 18 May 2009 17:00-18:30
PALACIOS-HUERTA Ignacio (LSE) : Field Centipedes
Monday 11 May 2009 17:00-18:30
ARAUJO Aloisio (IMPA FGV) : Regulating financial markets in a GEI
Full text [pdf]
Monday 4 May 2009 17:00-18:30
KRANTON Rachel E. (Duke University) : Strategic Interaction in Networks
Full text [pdf]
Monday 27 April 2009 17:00-18:30
DHILLON Amrita (Warwick University) : Development and the Interaction of Enforcement Institutions
Full text [pdf]
Monday 6 April 2009 17:00-18:30
DEMANGE Gabrielle (PSE) : Sharing information in web communities
Full text [pdf]
Monday 30 March 2009 17:00-18:30
PERSICO Nicola (New York University) : A Search-Theoretic Model of the Retail Market for Illicit Drugs
Co-auteurs: Manolis Galenianos et Rosalie Liccardo Pacula
Full text [pdf]
Monday 23 March 2009 17:00-18:30
JACKSON Matthew O. (Stanford University) : Understanding the Speed of Learning and Diffusion in Social Networks
Full text [pdf]
Monday 16 March 2009 17:00-18:30
KARTIK Navin (Columbia University) : Implementation with Evidence
Co-auteur: Olivier Tercieux
Monday 9 March 2009 17:00-18:30
MOLDOVANU Benny (University of Bonn) : Learning About The Future and Dynamic Efficiency
Co-auteur: Alex Gershkov
Full text [pdf]
Monday 2 March 2009 17:00-18:30
WINTER Eyal (Hebrew University of Jerusalem) : Mental Equilibrium and Rational Emotions
Monday 9 February 2009 17:00-18:30
SALANIE Bernard (CREST et Columbia University) : Assortative Matching on the Marriage Market: A Structural Investigation
Full text [pdf]
Monday 2 February 2009 17:00-18:30
GONZALES Julio (University of Vigo) : Essentializing equilibrium concepts
Co-auteurs: Federica Briata, Ignacio García-Jurado et Fioravante Patrone
Monday 26 January 2009 17:00-18:30
DASGUPTA Amil (London School of Economics) : The Price Impact of Institutional Herding
Co-auteurs: Andrea Prat et Michela Verardo
Monday 19 January 2009 17:00-18:30
LAROQUE Guy (Paris School of Economics) : Optimal taxation in the extensive model
Full text [pdf]
Monday 12 January 2009 17:00-18:30
TROEGER Thomas (University of Bonn) : Collusion via Resale
Full text [pdf]
Monday 5 January 2009 17:00-18:30
The session was canceled.
DEMANGE Gabrielle (PSE) : *
Monday 15 December 2008 17:00-18:30
BLOCH Francis (Ecole Polytechnique) : Cores of Combined Games
Co-auteur: G. de Clippel
Monday 8 December 2008 17:00-18:30
VIVES Xavier (IESE Business School and UPF) : # * Strategic Supply Function Competition with Private Information
Full text [pdf]
Monday 1 December 2008 17:00-18:30
ARMSTRONG Mark (University College London) : A Model of Delegated Project Choice
Full text [pdf]
Monday 24 November 2008 17:00-18:30
The session was canceled.
KARTIK Navin (University of Columbia) : *
Monday 17 November 2008 17:00-18:30
SABOURIAN Hamid (University of Cambridge) : Herding and Contrarian Behaviour in Efficient Financial Markets
Full text [pdf]
Monday 10 November 2008 17:00-18:30
NOLDEKE Georg (Univ. of Basel) : On the Strategic Foundations of Competitive Equilibrium
Co-auteur : Stephan Lauermann (Univ. of Michigan)
Monday 20 October 2008 17:00-18:30
CORBO Jacomo (Harvard Univ.) : Network Effects in Local Contribution Economies: Identification and Regulation
Full text [pdf]
Monday 13 October 2008 17:00-18:30
BENABOU Roland J. (Princeton Univ.) : Groupthink: Collective Delusions in Organizations and Markets
Full text [pdf]
Monday 29 September 2008 17:00-18:30
SZENTES Balázs (Univ. of Chicago) : Definable and Contractible Contracts
Co-auteur: Michael Peters.
Full text [pdf]
Monday 9 June 2008 16:00-17:30
HORNER Johannes (Yale University) : How robust is the folk theorem with imperfect public monitoring?
Co-auteur : Wojciech OLSZEWSKI (Kellogg School of Management)
Full text [pdf]
Monday 2 June 2008 17:30-19:00
CRAMTON Peter (University of Maryland) : Spectrum Auction Design
Abstract
Spectrum auctions are used by governments to assign and price licenses for wireless communication. The standard approach is the simultaneous ascending auction, in which many related lots are auctioned simultaneously in a sequence of rounds. I analyze the strengths and weaknesses of the approach with examples from US spectrum auctions. I then present a variation, the package clock auction, adopted by the UK, which addresses many of the problems of the simultaneous ascending auction while building on its strengths. The package clock auction is a simple dynamic auction in which bidders bid on packages of lots. Most importantly, the pricing rule and information policy are carefully tailored to mitigate gaming behavior. An activity rule based on revealed preference promotes price discovery throughout the clock stage of the auction. Truthful bidding is encouraged, which simplifies bidding and improves efficiency. Experimental tests confirm the advantages of the approach.
Full text [pdf]
Monday 26 May 2008 17:30-19:00
SCHOTTER Andrew (New York Univ.) : Paying for Confindence : An Experimental Study of the Demand for Non-Instrumental Information
Andrew SCHOTTER(New York Univ.) and Kfir ELIAZ
Full text [pdf]
Monday 19 May 2008 17:30-19:00
POSTLEWAITE A. (Univ. of Pennsylvania) : Repeated Games and Limited Information Processing
Full text [pdf]
Tuesday 13 May 2008 17:30-19:00
SAMUELSON Larry (University of Wisconsin ) : Auctions without Commitment
Johannes HORNER
Monday 5 May 2008 17:30-19:00
The session was canceled.
BERGEMANN Dirk (Yale University) : *
Monday 14 April 2008 17:30-19:00
TATUR Tymon (Bonn Univ.) : General Evolutionary Equilibrium
Monday 7 April 2008 17:30-19:00
DEKEL Eddie (Northwestern University) : Self-Control and Random Strotz Representations
Barton L. LIPMAN (Boston University)
Full text [pdf]
Monday 31 March 2008 17:30-19:00
BENABIB Jess (New York University) : Age, Luck, and Inheritance
Shenghao ZHU (New York University)
Full text [pdf]
Monday 17 March 2008 17:30-19:00
GERSHKOV Alex (Bonn University) : Dynamic Revenue Maximization with Heterogenous Objects: A Mechanism Design Approach
Benny MOLDOVANU (Department of Economics, University of Bonn)
Full text [pdf]
Monday 10 March 2008 17:30-19:00
FUDENBERG Drew (Harvard) : Repeated Games with Frequent Signals
LEVINE David K.
Full text [pdf]
Monday 18 February 2008 17:30-19:00
SANNIKOV Y. (Univ. of California) : A Learning Model of Dividend Smoothing
Co-auteur : Peter DeMarzo
Full text [pdf]
Monday 11 February 2008 17:30-19:00
JULLIEN B. (IDEI) : The Market for Lawyers: the Value of Information on the Quality of Legal Services.
Co-auteur : Elisabetta IOSSA (Economics and Finance Section, Brunel University)
Full text [pdf]
Monday 4 February 2008 17:30-19:00
BOSSAERT Peter (Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale Lausanne (EPFL), ) : The Neurobiological Foundations of Valuation in Human Decision Making under Uncertainty
Ming HSU (Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology, and Department of Economics, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)
Full text [pdf]
Monday 28 January 2008 17:30-19:00
SALANIE François (Toulouse School of Economics) : Non-Exclusive Competition in the Market for Lemons
Co-auteurs : Andrea ATTAR (Toulouse School of Economics (GREMAQ)), Thomas MARIOTTI (Toulouse School of Economics (GREMAQ/CNRS, IDEI))
Abstract
In order to check the impact of the exclusivity regime on equilibrium allocations, we set up a simple Akerlof-like model in which buyers may use arbitrary tariffs. Under exclusivity, we obtain the (zero-profit, separating) Riley-Rothschilds-Stiglitz allocation. Under non-exclusivity, there is also a unique equilibrium allocation that involves a unique price, as in Akerlof (1970). These results can be applied to insurance (in the dual model in Yaari, 1987), and have consequences for empirical tests of the existence of asymmetric information.
Full text [pdf]
Monday 21 January 2008 17:30-19:00
VOHRA R. (Northwestern University) : Characterization of Revenue Equivalence
Co-auteurs : Birgit Heydenreich, Rudolf MÄuller and Marc Uetz (Maastricht University)
Full text [pdf]
Monday 14 January 2008 17:30-19:00
SQUINTANI F. (University of Essex) : Mediation, Arbitration and Negotiation
Co-auteurs : Maria Goltsman, Johannes Horner and Gregory Pavlov
Abstract
We compare three common dispute resolution processes – negotiation, mediation, and arbitration – in the framework of Crawford and Sobel (1982). Under negotiation, the two parties engage in (possibly arbitrarily long) face-to-face cheap talk. Under mediation, the parties communicate with a neutral third party who makes a non-binding recommendation. Under arbitration, the two parties commit to conform to the third party recommendation. We characterize and compare the optimal mediation and arbitration procedures. Both mediators and arbitrators should optimally filter information, but mediators should also add noise to it. We find that unmediated negotiation performs as well as mediation if and only if the degree of conflict between the parties is low.
Full text [pdf]
Monday 7 January 2008 17:30-19:00
KUZMICS Christoph (MEDS) : Evolution, rationality and adaptation in a changing environment
Olivier Gossner, PSE
Monday 17 December 2007 17:30-19:00
MOORE J. (LSE) : Contracts as reference points
Co-auteur: Oliver Hart
Full text [pdf]
Monday 10 December 2007 17:30-19:00
TRANNOY A. (GREQAM) : Equality of opportunity :Definitions and testable conditions, with an application to income in France
Arnaud LEFRANC Nicolas PISTOLESI
Full text [pdf]
Monday 3 December 2007 17:30-19:00
BAGWELL K. (Columbia univ.) : Advertising and Collusion in Retail Markets
Co-auteur : G. Lee
Full text [pdf]
Monday 26 November 2007 17:30-19:00
PRAT A. (LSE) : Spatial Asset Pricing: A First Step
Co-auteur : Francois Ortalo-Magne (University of Madison-Wisconsin)
Full text [pdf]
Monday 19 November 2007 17:30-19:00
GOLOSOV M. (MIT) : Decentralized Trading with Private information
Guido Lorenzoni and Aleh Tsyvinski
Monday 12 November 2007 17:30-19:00
KIRCHSTEIGER G. (Univ. libre de Bruxelles) : The Role of Other-Regarding preferences in Competitive Markets
Co-auteurs : Martin Dufwenberg, Paul Heidhues, Frank Riedel et Joel Sobel
Full text [pdf]
Monday 22 October 2007 17:30-19:00
ELY J. (Northwestern univ.) : Kludged
Full text [pdf]
Monday 15 October 2007 17:30-19:00
RUSTICHINI A. (Cambridge univ.) : Social Decision Theory
Full text [pdf]
Monday 8 October 2007 17:30-19:00
JEHIEL P. (PSE) : Manipulative Auction Design
Full text [pdf]
Monday 1 October 2007 17:30-19:00
PESENDORFER M. (LSE) : Equilibrium Bids in Sponsored Search Auctions: Theory and Evidence
Co-auteurs : Tilman Borgers, Ingemar Cox and Vaclav Petricek
Full text [pdf]
Monday 25 June 2007 17:30-19:00
CHE Y.K. (Columbia univ.) : Expanding choice in school choice
Full text [pdf]
Monday 4 June 2007 17:30-19:00
GRANT S. (Rice univ.) : Generalized Utilitarianism and Harsanyi's Impartial Observer Theorem
Co-auteur (s) : A. Kajii, B. Polak & Z. Safra
Abstract
We provide an axiomatization of generalized utilitarian social welfare functions in the context of Harsanyi's impartial observer theorem. To do this, we reformulate Harsanyi's problem such that lotteries over identity (accidents of birth) and lotteries over outcomes (life chances) are independent. We show how to accommodate (first) Diamond's critique concerning fairness and (second) Pattanaik's critique concerning differing attitudes toward risk. In each case, we show what separates them from Harsanyi by showing what extra axioms return us to Harsanyi. Thus we provide two new axiomatizations of Harsanyi's utilitarianism.. Keywords: generalized utilitarianism, impartial observer, social welfare function, fairness, ex ante egalitarianism. JEL Classification: D63, D71
Full text [pdf]
Monday 21 May 2007 17:30-19:00
HOPKINS E. (Univ. of Edinburgh) : Learning in Games with Unstable Equilibria
Full text [pdf]
Monday 14 May 2007 17:30-19:00
RUBINSTEIN A. (Tel Aviv univ.) : On the Pragmatics of Persuasion
Co-auteur (s) : J. Glazer
Abstract
A speaker wishes to persuade a listener to take a certain action. The conditions under which the request is justified, from the listener’s point of view, depend on the state of the world, which is known only to the speaker. Each state is characterized by a set of statements from which the speaker chooses. A persuasion rule specifies which statements the listener finds persuasive. We study persuasion rules that maximize the probability that the listener accepts the request if and only if it is justified, given that the speaker maximizes the probability that his request is accepted. We prove that there always exists a persuasion rule involving no randomization and that all optimal persuasion rules are ex-post optimal. We relate our analysis to the field of pragmatics. KEYWORDS. Persuasion, mechanism design, hard evidence, pragmatics. JEL CLASSIFICATION. C61, D82, D83.
Full text [pdf]
Monday 23 April 2007 17:30-19:00
SANVER M. R. (Istanbul Bilgi univ.) : Sophisticated Preference Aggregation
Monday 2 April 2007 17:30-19:00
FLEURBAEY M. (CNRS) : Assessing risky social situations
Monday 26 March 2007 17:30-19:00
TIROLE J. (Institut d'économie industrielle) : Identity, Dignity and Taboos: Beliefs as Assets
Co-auteur (s) : R. Bénabou
Abstract
We analyze social and economic phenomena involving beliefs which people value and invest in, for affective or functional reasons. Individuals are at times uncertain about their own “deep values” and infer them from their past choices, which then come to define “who they are”. Identity investments increase when information is scarce or when a greater endowment of some asset (wealth, career, family, culture) raises the stakes on viewing it as valuable (escalating commitments). Taboos against transactions or the mere contemplation of tradeoffs arise to protect fragile beliefs about the “priceless” value of certain assets (life, freedom, love, faith) or things one “would never do”. Whether such behaviors are welfare-enhancing or reducing depends on whether beliefs are sought for a functional value (sense of direction, self-discipline) or for “mental consumption” motives (self-esteem, anticipatory feelings). Escalating commitments can thus lead to a “hedonic treadmill”, and competing identities cause dysfunctional failures to invest in high-return activities (education, adapting to globalization, assimilation), or even the destruction of productive assets. In social interactions, norm violations elicit a forceful response (exclusion, harassment) when they threaten a strongly held identity, but further erode morale when it was initially weak. Concerns for pride, dignity or wishful thinking lead to the inefficient breakdown of Coasian bargaining even under symmetric information, as partners seek to self-enhance and shift blame by turning down “insultingly low” offers. Keywords: identity, self-serving beliefs, self-image, memory, wishful thinking, anticipatory utility, self control, hedonic treadmill, bargaining, taboos, religion. JEL numbers: D81, D91, Z13.
Full text [pdf]
Monday 19 March 2007 17:30-19:00
AUSTEN-SMITH D. (Northwestern univ.) : Notes on Bias Uncertainty and Communication in Committes
Co-auteur (s) : T. Feddersen
Full text [pdf]
Monday 12 March 2007 17:30-19:00
MOOKHERJEE D. (Boston univ.) : Mechanism Design with Costly Communication: Implications for Decentralization
Co-auteur (s) : M. Tsumagari
Abstract
We develop a theory of mechanism design in a principal-multiagent setting with private information, where communication involves costly delay. The need to make production decisions within a time deadline prevents agents from communicating their entire private information to the principal, rendering revelation mechanisms infeasible. The mechanism design problem is formulated in a setting where production decisions are preceded by a multi-stage communication phase where agents and the principal exchange information. We examine trade-offs between centralization and decentralization of three components of the mechanism: contracting, communication and production decisions. Decentralization of contracting cannot dominate centralized contracting, but in some contexts can achieve equivalent profits for the principal. If cost hazard rates are linear, decentralization of production decisions and of communication strictly dominate centralization. These results apply even if communication is prone to exogenous errors or noise. KEYWORDS: communication, mechanism design, decentralization, incentives, principal-agent, organizations
Full text [pdf]
Monday 5 March 2007 17:30-19:00
CABRALES A. (Univ. Pompeu Fabra) : Market for Information: Of Inefficient Firewalls and Efficient Monopolies
Co-auteur (s) : P. Gottardi
Abstract
In this paper we build a formal model for environments where information is costly and where it can be used by potential competitors. The model allows to understand how such a market is organized, and whether it is efficient (ex-post and ex-ante). There is an object for sale, whose type is unknown. The buyers get utility from only one variety of the object. The type of the potential buyers are chosen independently of one another, and of the object for sale. The buyers can find out the type of the object for sale by paying a cost. Each buyer has to choose first whether or not to explore the object and then, if he has chosen to explore the object, whether to sell a report on his information to the uninformed buyers, and at which price. After the information is sold and signals revealed, all the buyers participate in a second price auction for the object. We characterize the equilibria and welfare properties for a variety of setups. Information sold may be homogeneous or heterogeneous among buyers, and the seller of information may be a potential competitor, the owner of the good, or a disinterested third party. The results show that disinterested third parties (firewalls) may lead to inefficiencies and monopolies may achieve the efficient outcome.
Full text [pdf]
Monday 12 February 2007 17:30-19:00
AGHION P. (Harvard univ.) : Volatilite, croissance, et role des politiques macroeconomiques
Co-auteur (s) : G. M. Angeletos, A. Banerjee & K. Manova
Abstract
We examine how credit constraints affect the cyclical behavior of productivity-enhancing investment and thereby volatility and growth. We first develop a simple growth model where firms engage in two types of investment: a short-term one and a long-term productivity-enhancing one. Because it takes longer to complete, long-term investment has a relatively less procyclical return but also a higher liquidity risk. Under complete financial markets, long-term investment is countercyclical, thus mitigating volatility. But when firms face tight credit constraints, long-term investment turns procyclical, thus amplifying volatility. Tighter credit therefore leads to both higher aggregate volatility and lower mean growth for a given total investment rate. We next confront the model with a panel of countries over the period 1960-2000 and find that a lower degree of financial development predicts a higher sensitivity of both the composition of investment and mean growth to exogenous shocks, as well as a stronger negative effect of volatility on growth. JEL codes: E22, E32, O16, O30, O41, O57. Keywords: Growth, fluctuations, business cycle, credit constraints, amplification, R&D.
Full text [pdf]
Monday 5 February 2007 17:30-19:00
MUKERJI S. (Univ. of Oxford) : Ordering Ambiguous Acts
Co-auteur : Ian Jewitt
Monday 29 January 2007 17:30-19:00
LEGROS P. (Univ. libre de Bruxelles) : Competing for Ownership
Co-auteur (s) : A. F. Newman
Abstract
We develop a tractable model of the allocation of control in firms in competitive markets, which permits us to study how changes in the scarcity of assets, skills or liquidity in the market translate into control inside the organization. Firms will be more integrated when the terms of trade are more favorable to the short side of the market, when liquidity is unequally distributed among existing firms and following a uniform increase in productivity. The model identifies a price-like mechanism whereby local liquidity or productivity shocks propagate and lead to widespread organizational restructuring.
Full text [pdf]
Monday 22 January 2007 17:30-19:00
BATTIGALLI P. (Bocconi univ.) : Dynamic Psychological Games
Co-auteur (s) : M. Dufwenberg
Abstract
The motivation of decision makers who care for emotions, reciprocity, or social conformity may depend directly on beliefs (about choices, beliefs, or information). Geanakoplos, Pearce & Stacchetti (Games and Economic Behavior, 1989) point out that traditional game theory is ill-equipped to address such matters, and they pioneer a new framework which does. However, their toolbox — psychological game theory — incorporates several restrictions that rule out plausible forms of belief-dependent motivation. Building on recent work on dynamic interactive epistemology, we propose a more general framework. Updated higher-order beliefs, beliefs of others, and plans of action may influence motivation, and we can capture dynamic psychological effects (such as sequential reciprocity, psychological forward induction, regret, and anxiety) that were previously ruled out. We develop solution concepts, provide examples, and explore properties. KEYWORDS: psychological games, belief-dependent motivation, extensiveform solution concepts, dynamic interactive epistemology. J.E.L. CLASSIFICATION NUMBERS: C72, C73.
Full text [pdf]
Monday 15 January 2007 17:30-19:00
TYRAN J. R. (Univ. of Copenhagen) : Democracy and the Disincentive Effect of Redistribution
Monday 8 January 2007 17:30-19:00
EICHBERGER J. (Univ. of Heidelberg) : Optimism and Pessimism in Games
Co-auteur (s) : D. Kelsey
Abstract
This paper considers the impact of ambiguity in strategic situations. It extends the earlier literature by allowing for optimistic responses to ambiguity. Ambiguity is modelled by CEU preferences. We study comparative statics of changes in ambiguity-attitude in games with strategic complements or substitutes. This gives a precise statement of the impact of ambiguity on economic behaviour. Keywords Ambiguity in games, support, strategic complementarity, optimism. JEL Classi…cation C72, D81.
Full text [pdf]
Monday 18 December 2006 17:30-19:00
YILDIZ M. (MIT) : Learning and Disagreement in a Uncertain World
Co-auteur (s) : D. Acemoglu & V. Chernozhukov
Abstract
Most economic analyses presume that there are limited differences in the prior beliefs of individuals, an assumption most often justified by the argument that sufficient common experiences and observations will eliminate disagreements. We investigate this claim using a simple model of Bayesian learning. Two individuals with different priors observe the same infinite sequence of signals about some underlying parameter. Existing results in the literature establish that when individuals are certain about the interpretation of signals, under very mild conditions there will be asymptotic agreement–their assessments will eventually agree. In contrast, we look at an environment in which individuals are uncertain about the interpretation of signals, meaning that they have non-degenerate probability distributions over the conditional distribution of signals given the underlying parameter. When priors on the parameter and the conditional distribution of signals have full support, we prove the following results: (1) Individuals will never agree, even after observing the same infinite sequence of signals. (2) Before observing the signals, they believe with probability 1 that their posteriors about the underlying parameter will fail to converge. (3) Observing the same sequence of signals may lead to a divergence of opinion rather than the typically-presumed convergence. We then characterize the conditions for asymptotic agreement under “approximate certainty”–i.e., as we look at the limit where uncertainty about the interpretation of the signals disappears. When the family of probability distributions of signals given the parameter has “rapidly-varying tails” (such as the normal or the exponential distributions), approximate certainty restores asymptotic agreement. However, when the family of probability distributions has “regularly-varying tails” (such as the Pareto, the log-normal, and the t-distributions), asymptotic agreement does not obtain even in the limit as the amount of uncertainty disappears. Lack of common priors has important implications for economic behavior in a range of circumstances. We illustrate how the type of learning outlined in this paper interacts with economic behavior in various different situations, including games of common interest, coordination, asset trading and bargaining. Keywords: asymptotic disagreement, Bayesian learning, merging of opinions. JEL Classification: C11, C72, D83.
Full text [pdf]
Monday 11 December 2006 17:30-19:00
SOBEL J. (Univ. of California) : Information Aggregation and Group Decisions
Abstract
Individuals with identical preferences each receive a signal about the unknown state of the world and separately decide upon a utility maximizing recommendation on the basis of that signal. The group’s decision maximizes the common utility function based on perfect pooling of individual information. With no restrictions on the information structure, the individual recommendations place no constraints on the group’s decision. In a monotone environment in which individuals receive conditionally independent signals, the paper presents conditions under which polarization does and does not arise. Journal of Economic Literature Classification Numbers: A12, D01; Keywords: statistical decision problem; group polarization; behavioral economics; psychology.
Full text [pdf]
Monday 4 December 2006 17:30-19:00
ELLINGSEN T. (Stockholm School of Economics) : Pride and Prejudice: The Human Side of Incentive Theory
Co-auteur (s) : M. Johannesson
Abstract
Many people are sensitive to social esteem, and their pride is a source of pro–social behavior. We present a game-theoretic model in which sensitivity to esteem varies across players and may depend on context as well players’ beliefs about their opponents. For example, the pride associated with a generous image is greater when the player holding the image is in fact generous and believes the observers to be generous as well. The model can account both for the fact that players’ behavior sometimes depends on the opponents’ unchosen options and for the prevalence of small symbolic gifts. Perhaps most importantly, the model offers an explanation for motivational crowding out: Control systems and pecuniary incentives may erode morale by signaling to the agent that the principal is not worth impressing. JEL classification: D01, D23, D82, Z13 Keywords: Motivational crowding out, Esteem, Incentives, Framing, Social preferences.
Full text [pdf]
Monday 27 November 2006 17:30-19:00
KOLM S. C. (EHESS) : Macrojustice: distribution, impôts et transferts optimaux.
Abstract
Optimum distribution, taxes and transfers The present system of distributive taxes and transfers creates vast economic waste and is contradictory. For optimizing it, general opinion demands that one evaluates the overall distribution (macrojustice) not according to criteria of welfare, but from principles of liberty, equality and social efficiency. There results a system of taxes and transfers which is very simple, rich in varied and important moral meanings, and easily implementable by simple and classical reforms.
Full text [pdf]
Monday 20 November 2006 17:30-19:00
THESMAR D. (HEC) : The Virtues of Dissent in Organizations
Co-auteur (s) : A. Landier & D. Sraer
Full text [pdf]
Monday 13 November 2006 17:30-19:00
MARTIMORT D. (Institut d'économie industrielle) : Mechanism Design with Private Communication
Co-auteur (s) : V. Dequiedt
Abstract
This paper assumes that communication between the principal and each of his agents is private. First, this assumption simplifies significantly mechanisms and institutions. Second, it restores continuity with respect to the information structure but still maintains the useful role of correlation to better extract the agents’ information rent. We first prove a Revelation Principle with private communication that characterizes the set of implementable allocations which cannot be manipulated by the principal by means of simple non-manipulability constraints. Equipped with this tool, we investigate optimal non-manipulable mechanisms in various environments (unrelated projects, auctions, team productions). We also demonstrate a Taxation Principle with private communication and draw some links between our framework and the common agency literature. Keywords: Mechanism Design, Private Communication. JEL Classification : D82.
Full text [pdf]
Monday 6 November 2006 17:30-19:00
SPIEGLER R. (Tel Aviv univ.) : A mechanism design approach to speculative trade
Co-auteur (s) : K. Eliaz
Full text [pdf]
Monday 23 October 2006 17:30-19:00
AL-NAJJAR N. I. (Northwestern univ.) : Diversity and Ambiguity in a Learning Model of Belief Formation
Monday 16 October 2006 17:30-19:00
LASLIER J.F. (Ecole polytechnique) : Strategic approval voting in a large electorate
Full text [pdf]
Monday 9 October 2006 17:30-19:00
WOLINSKI A. (Northwestern univ.) : Search with Asymmetric Information
Co-auteur (s) : R. D. Horan, E. H. Bulte et J. F. Shogren
Full text [pdf]
Monday 2 October 2006 17:30-19:00
SHOGREN J. F. (Univ. of Wyoming) : Coevolution of Human Speech and Trade
Co-auteur (s) : R. D. Horan & E. H. Bulte
Full text [pdf]
Monday 25 September 2006 17:30-19:00
SCHMIDT K. M. (Univ. of Munich) : Fairness and Contract Design
Co-auteur (s) : Ernst Fehr et Alexander Klein
Full text [pdf]
Monday 18 September 2006 17:30-19:00
KAJII A. (Kyoto univ.) : A Refinement of the Myerson Value
Co-auteur (s) : H. Kojima et T. Ui
Full text [pdf]
Monday 5 June 2006
CALVO-ARMENGOL A. (Univ. autonoma de Barcelona) : Interaction patterns with hidden complementarities
Co-auteur(s) : C. Ballester
Full text [pdf]
Monday 29 May 2006
VAYANOS D. (LSE) : A Search-Based Theory of the On-the-Run Phenomenon
Co-auteur(s) : P.-O. Weill
Full text [pdf]
Monday 22 May 2006
SALANIE B. (Columbia univ.) : Identifying Heterogeneity in Attitudes Towards Risk
Co-auteur(s) : P.-A. Chiappori, A. Gandhi & F. Salanié
Full text [pdf]
Monday 15 May 2006
The session was canceled.
DEKEL E. (Northwestern univ.) : *
Monday 24 April 2006
GAJDDOS T. (Univ. de Paris 1) : The Ignorant Observer
Co-auteur(s) : F. Kandil
Full text [pdf]
Monday 3 April 2006
LEVY G. (LSE) : On the limits of communication in multidimensional cheap talk
Co-auteur(s) : R. Razin
Full text [pdf]
Monday 27 March 2006
BENNARDO A. (Schola medica Salernitana) : Competition markets with endogeneoes health risks
Co-auteur(s) : S. Piccolo
Full text [pdf]
Monday 20 March 2006
LANGLOIS C. (Georgetown univ.) : Costly economic sanctions as bargaining tactics : A Game Theoretic and Empirical Analysis
Co-auteur(s) : J. P. P. Langlois
Full text [pdf]
Monday 13 March 2006
KUBLER F. (Univ. Mannheim) : Social Security and Risk Sharing
Co-auteur(s) : P. Gottardi
Full text [pdf]
Monday 6 March 2006
CANTILLON E. (Univ. libre de Bruxelles) : Optimal Procurement when both Price and Quality Matter
Co-auteur(s) : J. Asker
Full text [pdf]
Monday 27 February 2006
GUESNERIE R. (Collège de France) : The design of post-Kyoto climate schemes : an introductory analytical assessment
Full text [pdf]
Monday 20 February 2006
YOUNG P. (John Hopkins univ.) : The Spread of Innovations Through Social Learning
Full text [pdf]
Monday 30 January 2006
GOYAL S. (Univ. of Essex) : Network games
Co-auteur(s) : A. Galeotti & M. O. Jackson
Full text [pdf]
Monday 23 January 2006
MOLDOVANU B. (Univ. of Bonn) : The theory of assortie matchings based on costly signals
Co-auteur(s) : H. Hoppe & A. Sela
Full text [pdf]
Monday 16 January 2006
GERMANO F. (Univ. Pompeu Fabra) : What do the Papers Sell ?
Co-auteur(s) : M. Ellman
Full text [pdf]
Monday 9 January 2006
MASKIN E. (Princeton univ.) : Sequential Innovation, Patents, and Imitation
Monday 12 December 2005
SCHLAG K. (European university institute) : Robust monopoly pricing: the case of regret
Co-auteur(s) : D. Bergemann
Full text [pdf]
Monday 5 December 2005
GOLLIER C. (Univ. de Toulouse) : The consumption-based determinants of the term structure of discount rates
Full text [pdf]
Monday 28 November 2005
FAURE-GRIMAUD A. (LSE) : Thinking ahead : the decision problem
Co-auteur(s) : P. Bolton
Full text [pdf]
Monday 21 November 2005
ROCHON C. (Univ. of Oxford) : Devaluation without common knowledge
Full text [pdf]
Monday 14 November 2005
ARAGONES E. (Instituto de análisis económico) : A model of participatory democracy: understanding the case of Porto Alegre
Co-auteur(s) : S. Sánchez-Pagés
Full text [pdf]
Monday 7 November 2005
MEIER M. (Instituto de análisis económico) : Interactive unawareness
Co-auteur(s) : A. Heifetz & B. C. Schipper
Full text [pdf]
Monday 17 October 2005
RENAULT R. (Univ. de Cergy-Pontoise) : Comparative advertising
Co-auteur(s) : S.P. Anderson
Full text [pdf]
Monday 10 October 2005
SORENSEN P. N. (Univ. of Copenhagen) : Noise, Information and the Favorite-Longshot Bias
Co-auteur(s) : M. Ottaviani
Full text [pdf]
Monday 3 October 2005
VULKAN N. (Oxford univ.) : Markets Versus Negociations : the Predominance of Centralized Markets
Co-auteur(s) : Z. Neeman
Full text [pdf]
Monday 26 September 2005
DAVILA J. (CNRS) : Competitive Bargaining Equilibrium
Co-auteur(s) : J. Eeckhout
Full text [pdf]
Monday 19 September 2005
HART S. (Hebrew university of Jerusalem) : Adaptive heuristics
Monday 20 June 2005
The session was canceled.
RUBINSTEIN A. (Tel Aviv univ.) : Equilibrium in the Jungle
Monday 20 June 2005
The session was canceled.
RUBINSTEIN A. (Tel Aviv univ.) : Equilibrium in the Jungle
Monday 13 June 2005
ROEMER J. (Yale univ.) : Impartality, solidarity, and priority in the Theory of Justice
Full text [pdf]
Monday 13 June 2005
ROEMER J. (Yale univ.) : Impartality, solidarity, and priority in the Theory of Justice
Full text [pdf]
Monday 6 June 2005
QUINZII M. (Univ. of California) : An Equilibrium Model of Executive Compensation
Co-auteur(s) : M. Magill
Full text [pdf]
Monday 6 June 2005
QUINZII M. (Univ. of California) : An Equilibrium Model of Executive Compensation
Co-auteur(s) : M. Magill
Full text [pdf]
Monday 30 May 2005
CHAMLEY C. (PSE) : Complementarities in Information Acquisition with Short-Term Trading
Full text [pdf]
Monday 30 May 2005
CHAMLEY C. (PSE) : Complementarities in Information Acquisition with Short-Term Trading
Full text [pdf]
Monday 23 May 2005
KARNI E. (John Hopkins univ.) : Subjective expected utility without states of the world
Full text [pdf]
Monday 23 May 2005
KARNI E. (John Hopkins univ.) : Subjective expected utility without states of the world
Full text [pdf]
Monday 16 May 2005
LIPMAN B.L. : Temptation-Driven Preferences
Co-auteur(s) :E. Dekel et A. Rustichini
Full text [pdf]
Monday 16 May 2005
LIPMAN B.L. : Temptation-Driven Preferences
Co-auteur(s) :E. Dekel et A. Rustichini
Full text [pdf]
Monday 9 May 2005
THOMSON W. : Children crying at birthday parties : why ? Fairness and incentives for cake division problems
Full text [pdf]
Monday 9 May 2005
THOMSON W. : Children crying at birthday parties : why ? Fairness and incentives for cake division problems
Full text [pdf]
Monday 18 April 2005
WEIBULL J. W. (Stockholm school of economics) : Dynamic Bertrand Competition with Intertemporal Demand
Co-auteur(s) : P. Dutta et A. Matros
Full text [pdf]
Monday 18 April 2005
WEIBULL J. W. (Stockholm school of economics) : Dynamic Bertrand Competition with Intertemporal Demand
Co-auteur(s) : P. Dutta et A. Matros
Full text [pdf]
Monday 11 April 2005
MANIQUET F. (Univ. of Namur) : Endogenous affirmative action : gender bias leads to gender quotas
Co-auteur(s) : M. Morelli et G. Frechette
Full text [pdf]
Monday 11 April 2005
MANIQUET F. (Univ. of Namur) : Endogenous affirmative action : gender bias leads to gender quotas
Co-auteur(s) : M. Morelli et G. Frechette
Full text [pdf]
Monday 4 April 2005
MOULIN H. (Rice univ.) : Minimizing the worst slowdown: off-line and on-line
Full text [pdf]
Monday 4 April 2005
MOULIN H. (Rice univ.) : Minimizing the worst slowdown: off-line and on-line
Full text [pdf]
Monday 21 March 2005
COURTY P. (European university institute) : Price variation aversion
Co-auteur(s) : M. Pagliero
Full text [pdf]
Monday 21 March 2005
COURTY P. (European university institute) : Price variation aversion
Co-auteur(s) : M. Pagliero
Full text [pdf]
Monday 14 March 2005
PESENDORFER W. (Princeton univ.) : The Canonical Type Space for Interdependent Preferences
Co-auteur(s) : F. Gul
Full text [pdf]
Monday 14 March 2005
PESENDORFER W. (Princeton univ.) : The Canonical Type Space for Interdependent Preferences
Co-auteur(s) : F. Gul
Full text [pdf]
Monday 7 March 2005
PERESS J. (INSEAD) : The Stock Market and the Allocation of Capital in a Production Economy
Full text [pdf]
Monday 7 March 2005
PERESS J. (INSEAD) : The Stock Market and the Allocation of Capital in a Production Economy
Full text [pdf]
Monday 7 February 2005
DUTTA B. : Endogenous Communication Networks
Co-auteur(s) : F. Bloch et S. Mutuswami
Full text [pdf]
Monday 7 February 2005
DUTTA B. : Endogenous Communication Networks
Co-auteur(s) : F. Bloch et S. Mutuswami
Full text [pdf]
Monday 31 January 2005
INDERST R. (INSEAD) : Optimal Contract Design when Decision and Incentive Problems Interact
Full text [pdf]
Monday 31 January 2005
INDERST R. (INSEAD) : Optimal Contract Design when Decision and Incentive Problems Interact
Full text [pdf]
Monday 24 January 2005
LARUELLE A. (Univ. d'Alicante) : Bargaining in committees of representatives : the optimal voting rule
Co-auteur(s) : F. Valenciano
Full text [pdf]
Monday 24 January 2005
LARUELLE A. (Univ. d'Alicante) : Bargaining in committees of representatives : the optimal voting rule
Co-auteur(s) : F. Valenciano
Full text [pdf]
Monday 17 January 2005
SENIK C. (PSE) : Ambition and Jealousy. Income interactions in the Old Europe versus the New Europe and the United States
Full text [pdf]
Monday 17 January 2005
SENIK C. (PSE) : Ambition and Jealousy. Income interactions in the Old Europe versus the New Europe and the United States
Full text [pdf]
Monday 13 December 2004
HEAD K. (Univ. of British Columbia) : Regional Wage and Employment responses to Market Potential in the UE
Full text [pdf]
Monday 13 December 2004
HEAD K. (Univ. of British Columbia) : Regional Wage and Employment responses to Market Potential in the UE
Full text [pdf]
Monday 6 December 2004
ESTEBAN J. (Univ. Pompeu Fabra) : Inequality, Lobbying and Ressource Allocation
Full text [pdf]
Monday 6 December 2004
ESTEBAN J. (Univ. Pompeu Fabra) : Inequality, Lobbying and Ressource Allocation
Full text [pdf]
Monday 29 November 2004
GARY-BOBO R. (Univ. de Paris 1) : Efficient tuition fees, examinations, and subsidies
Full text [pdf]
Monday 29 November 2004
GARY-BOBO R. (Univ. de Paris 1) : Efficient tuition fees, examinations, and subsidies
Full text [pdf]
Monday 22 November 2004
PIKETTY T. (PSE) : Should We Reduce Class Size or School Segregation? Theory and Evidence from France
Full text [pdf]
Monday 22 November 2004
PIKETTY T. (PSE) : Should We Reduce Class Size or School Segregation? Theory and Evidence from France
Full text [pdf]
Monday 15 November 2004
NAGEL R. (Univ. Pompeu Fabra) : Asymmetric toeholds in an English auction experiment
Monday 15 November 2004
NAGEL R. (Univ. Pompeu Fabra) : Asymmetric toeholds in an English auction experiment
Monday 8 November 2004
GEANAKOPLOS J. (Yale univ.) : Liquidity and Crashes: General Equilibrium with Collateral
Monday 8 November 2004
GEANAKOPLOS J. (Yale univ.) : Liquidity and Crashes: General Equilibrium with Collateral
Monday 25 October 2004
KIRMAN A. (GREQAM) : Equilibria in financial markets with heterogeneous agents : a new perspective
Full text [pdf]
Monday 25 October 2004
KIRMAN A. (GREQAM) : Equilibria in financial markets with heterogeneous agents : a new perspective
Full text [pdf]
Monday 18 October 2004
MARIOTTI T (Univ. de Toulouse) : Auction and the informed seller problem
Full text [pdf]
Monday 18 October 2004
MARIOTTI T (Univ. de Toulouse) : Auction and the informed seller problem
Full text [pdf]
Monday 11 October 2004
SCHRAM A. (Univ. of Amsterdam) : Neighborhood information exchange and voter participation : an experimental study
Co-auteur(s) : J. Grober
Full text [pdf]
Monday 11 October 2004
SCHRAM A. (Univ. of Amsterdam) : Neighborhood information exchange and voter participation : an experimental study
Co-auteur(s) : J. Grober
Full text [pdf]
Monday 4 October 2004
GOSSNER O. (CERAS) : The value of Information
Full text [pdf]
Monday 4 October 2004
GOSSNER O. (CERAS) : The value of Information
Full text [pdf]
Monday 27 September 2004
TALLON J.M. (Univ. de Paris 1) : Coping with Imprecise Information : a Decision Theoretic Approach
Co-auteur(s) : T. Gajdos & J.C. Vergnaud
Full text [pdf]
Monday 27 September 2004
TALLON J.M. (Univ. de Paris 1) : Coping with Imprecise Information : a Decision Theoretic Approach
Co-auteur(s) : T. Gajdos & J.C. Vergnaud
Full text [pdf]
Monday 20 September 2004
AUSUBEL L. (Univ. of Maryland) : De-Frictionalizing the walrasian Auctioneer
Full text [pdf]
Monday 20 September 2004
AUSUBEL L. (Univ. of Maryland) : De-Frictionalizing the walrasian Auctioneer
Full text [pdf]
Monday 7 June 2004
YARIV L. (Univ. of California) : Collective Choice with Communication
Co-auteur(s) : D. Gerardi
Monday 7 June 2004
YARIV L. (Univ. of California) : Collective Choice with Communication
Co-auteur(s) : D. Gerardi
Monday 24 May 2004
MORRIS S. (Yale univ.) : Robust Implementation
Co-auteur(s) : D. Bergemann
Monday 24 May 2004
MORRIS S. (Yale univ.) : Robust Implementation
Co-auteur(s) : D. Bergemann
Monday 10 May 2004
ROCHET J.C. (GREMAQ) : A Theory of the Balance Sheet
Monday 10 May 2004
ROCHET J.C. (GREMAQ) : A Theory of the Balance Sheet
Monday 3 May 2004
EDLIN A. (Berkeley univ.) : The Accident Externality from Driving
Co-auteur(s) : P. Karaca-Mandic
Monday 3 May 2004
EDLIN A. (Berkeley univ.) : The Accident Externality from Driving
Co-auteur(s) : P. Karaca-Mandic
Monday 5 April 2004
JEHIEL P. (CERAS) : Valuation equilibria
Co-auteur(s) : D. Samet
Monday 5 April 2004
JEHIEL P. (CERAS) : Valuation equilibria
Co-auteur(s) : D. Samet
Monday 29 March 2004
NYARKO Y. (New York univ.) : The Market for Advice : An experimental Investigation
Monday 29 March 2004
NYARKO Y. (New York univ.) : The Market for Advice : An experimental Investigation
Monday 22 March 2004
GHATAK M. (LSE) : Credit Rationing, Wealth Inequality, and Allocation of Talent
Co-auteur(s) : M. Morelli et T. Sjostrom
Monday 22 March 2004
GHATAK M. (LSE) : Credit Rationing, Wealth Inequality, and Allocation of Talent
Co-auteur(s) : M. Morelli et T. Sjostrom
Monday 15 March 2004
GOTTARDI P. (Univ. di Venezia) : Market Power and Information Revelation in Dynamic Trading
Co-auteur(s) : R. Serrano
Monday 15 March 2004
GOTTARDI P. (Univ. di Venezia) : Market Power and Information Revelation in Dynamic Trading
Co-auteur(s) : R. Serrano
Monday 8 March 2004
PRAT A. (LSE) : A model of trading on financial markets in which agents have career concerns
Co-auteur(s) : A. Dasgupta
Monday 8 March 2004
PRAT A. (LSE) : A model of trading on financial markets in which agents have career concerns
Co-auteur(s) : A. Dasgupta
Monday 1 March 2004
REPULLO R. (CEMFI) : Loan Pricing under Basel Capital Requirements
Co-auteur(s) : J. Suarez
Monday 1 March 2004
REPULLO R. (CEMFI) : Loan Pricing under Basel Capital Requirements
Co-auteur(s) : J. Suarez
0000
R1-09
*
0000
R1-09
VIVES Xavier (IESE) : *
0000
R1-09
GILBOA Itzkhak ( Tel-Aviv and HEC) : *
0000
PENTA Antonio (UW-Madison) : *