Hasil untuk "econ.TH"

Adam Hamdan

In priority-based matching, serial dictatorship (SD) is simple, strategyproof, and Pareto efficient, but not free of justified envy (i.e. fair). This paper studies how to fairly order agents in SD as a function of their priorities. I show that if preferences are identical across agents and uniformly distributed, and objects have unit capacities, the serial order that minimizes the expected number of justified envy cases is the Kemeny ranking of agents' priorities. If any of these assumptions -- identical preferences, uniformly distributed preferences, or unit capacities -- is relaxed, the optimal SD follows a weighted Kemeny ranking. Broadly, these results demonstrate how insights from social choice theory can inform the design of practical matching mechanisms.

Minoru Osawa

We introduce the sampling logit equilibrium (SLE), a stationary concept for population games in which agents evaluate actions using a finite sample of opponents' plays and respond according to a logit choice rule. This framework combines informational frictions from finite sampling with stochastic choice. When the sample size is large, SLE is well approximated by a logit equilibrium of a virtual game whose payoffs incorporate explicit distortion terms generated by sampling noise. Examples illustrate how finite sampling can systematically shift equilibrium behavior and generate equilibrium selection effects.

Nemanja Antic, Harry Pei

We develop an overlapping generations model where each agent observes a verifiable private signal about the state and, with positive probability, also receives signals disclosed by his predecessor. The agent then takes an action and decides which signals to pass on. Each agent's action has a positive externality on his predecessor and his optimal action increases in his belief about the state. We show that as the probability that messages reach the next generation approaches one, agents become increasingly selective in disclosing information. In the limit, all signals except for the most favorable ones will be concealed.

Federico Echenique, Sumit Goel, SangMok Lee

We study fairness in the allocation of discrete goods. Exactly fair (envy-free) allocations are impossible, so we discuss notions of approximate fairness. In particular, we focus on allocations in which the swap of two items serves to eliminate any envy, either for the allocated bundles or with respect to a reference bundle. We propose an algorithm that, under some restrictions on agents' preferences, achieves an allocation with ``swap bounded envy.''

Yaron Azrieli, Rachana Das

We study a model of persuasion in which the receiver is a `conservative Bayesian' whose updated belief is a convex combination of the prior and the correct Bayesian posterior. While in the classic Bayesian case providing information sequentially is never valuable, we show that the sender gains from sequential persuasion in many of the environments considered in the literature on strategic information transmission. We also consider the case in which the sender and receiver are both biased and prove that the maximal expected payoff for the sender under sequential persuasion is the same as in the case where neither of them is biased.

Mikhail Drugov, Dmitry Ryvkin

We characterize robust tournament design -- the prize scheme that maximizes the lowest effort in a rank-order tournament where the distribution of noise is unknown, except for an upper bound, $\bar{H}$, on its Shannon entropy. The robust tournament scheme awards positive prizes to all ranks except the last, with a distinct top prize. Asymptotically, the prizes follow the harmonic number sequence and induce an exponential distribution of noise with rate parameter $e^{-\bar{H}}$. The robust prize scheme is highly unequal, especially in small tournaments, but becomes more equitable as the number of participants grows, with the Gini coefficient approaching $1/2$.

Davide Bordoli, Ryota Iijima

This paper characterizes convex information costs using an axiomatic approach. We employ mixture convexity and sub-additivity, which capture the idea that producing "balanced" outputs is less costly than producing ``extreme'' ones. Our analysis leads to a novel class of cost functions that can be expressed in terms of Rényi divergences between signal distributions across states. This representation allows for deviations from the standard posterior-separable cost, thereby accommodating recent experimental evidence. We also characterize two simpler special cases, which can be written as either the maximum or a convex transformation of posterior-separable costs.

Zhang Xu, Wei Zhao

This paper characterizes the set of feasible posterior distributions subject to graph-based inferential privacy constraint, including both differential and inferential privacy. This characterization can be done through enumerating all extreme points of the feasible posterior set. A connection between extreme posteriors and strongly connected semi-chains is then established. All these semi-chains can be constructed through successive unfolding operations on semi-chains with two partitions, which can be constructed through classical spanning tree algorithm. A sharper characterization of semi-chains with two partitions for differential privacy is provided.

Kota Murayama

Does greater connectivity enhance the value of public information? I study a networked beauty contest game where agents balance adaptation to the fundamental with local coordination. The analysis reveals a stark non-monotonicity: while public disclosure improves welfare when interactions are uniform, regardless of their intensity, it can be detrimental in core-periphery structures. This welfare loss stems from a distortion driven by the core, where core agents over-respond to a noisy public signal, forcing peripheral neighbors to absorb this volatility to maintain alignment. These findings suggest that standard transparency policies can backfire in tiered markets where dominant hubs propagate excess volatility.

Florian Mudekereza

We show that, in large population games, decentralized information aggregation generically corrects for individual-level biases. This establishes a new testable aggregate efficiency benchmark where the behavior of boundedly rational agents mimics that of fully rational agents. However, we find that structural economic forces such as strategic network formation and profit-maximizing platforms can systematically select pathological environments to exploit individuals' biases, thereby causing aggregate inefficiencies. We characterize these inefficiencies in monopoly and labor markets. Our findings therefore suggest that policy should shift focus from correcting individuals' behavior to monitoring and regulating information structures.

Hendrik Rommeswinkel

Decision makers sometimes cannot observe the consequences of their actions ex-post. This paper axiomatically characterizes a decision model in which the decision maker cares about verifying that a good consequence has been achieved. Preferences over acts identify a set of events the decision maker expects to verify. Decision makers choose acts maximizing, in expectation over verifiable events, the worst-case utility consistent with each event. A dual model captures decision makers who instead seek to obscure poor outcomes from verification. As an application, firms choosing carbon-reduction technologies may prefer less efficient but more verifiable technologies to prove emission reductions to stakeholders.

Ian Ball, Xin Gao

We consider a sender-receiver game in which the receiver's action is binary and the sender's preferences are state-independent. The state is multidimensional. The receiver can select one dimension of the state to check (i.e., observe) before choosing his action. We identify a class of influential equilibria in which the sender's message reveals which components of the state are highest, and the receiver selects one of these components to check. The sender can benefit from communication if and only if she prefers one of these equilibria to the no-communication outcome. Similar equilibria exist when the receiver can check multiple dimensions.

Teddy Mekonnen

This paper analyzes the strategic interactions between a profit-maximizing monopolist and a free, capacity-constrained public option. By restricting its own supply, the monopolist intentionally congests the public option and induces rationing, which increases consumers' willingness to pay for guaranteed access. Counterintuitively, expanding the public option's capacity may raise the monopoly price and lower consumer welfare. However, I derive conditions under which all buyer types benefit from a capacity expansion, and extend these results to a setting where an oligopoly competes with a public option. These findings have implications for mixed public-private markets, such as housing, education, and healthcare.

Jan Knoepfle, Julia Salmi

We analyze the dynamic tradeoff between generating and disclosing evidence. Agents are tempted to delay investing in a new technology in order to learn from information generated by the experiences of others. This informational free-riding is collectively harmful as it slows down learning and innovation adoption. A welfare-maximizing designer can delay the disclosure of previously generated information in order to speed up adoption. The optimal policy transparently discloses bad news and delays good news. This finding resonates with regulation demanding that fatal breakdowns be reported promptly. The designer's intervention makes all agents better off.

Hans Gersbach, Kremena Valkanova

This paper introduces the Voting with Random Proposers (VRP) procedure to address the challenges of agenda manipulation in voting. In each round of VRP, a randomly selected proposer suggests an alternative that is voted on against the previous round's winner. In a framework with single-peaked preferences, we show that the VRP procedure guarantees that the Condorcet winner is implemented in a few rounds with truthful voting, and in just two rounds under sufficiently symmetric preference distributions or if status quo positions are not extreme. The results have applications for committee decisions, legislative decision-making, and the organization of citizens' assemblies and decentralized autonomous organizations.

Mark Whitmeyer

We explore the connection between an agent's decision problem and her ranking of information structures. We find that a finite amount of ordinal data on the agent's ranking of experiments is enough to identify her (finite) set of undominated actions (up to relabeling and duplication) and the beliefs rendering each such action optimal. An additional smattering of cardinal data, comparing the relative value to the agent of finitely many pairs of experiments, identifies her utility function up to an action-independent payoff.

John Y. Zhu

I study statistical discrimination driven by verifiable beliefs, such as those generated by machine learning, rather than by humans. When beliefs are verifiable, interventions against statistical discrimination can move beyond simple, belief-free designs like affirmative action, to more sophisticated ones, that constrain decision makers based on what they are thinking. I design a belief-contingent intervention I call common identity. I show that it is effective at eliminating equilibrium statistical discrimination, even when training data exhibit the various statistical biases that often plague algorithmic decision problems.

Alexey Kushnir, James Michelson

We explore the properties of optimal multi-dimensional auctions in a model where a single object of multiple qualities is sold to several buyers. Using simulations, we test some hypotheses conjectured by Belloni et al. [3] and Kushnir and Shourideh [7]. As part of this work, we provide the first open-source library for multi-dimensional auction simulations written in Python.

Sander Heinsalu

In the pool of people seeking partners, a uniformly greater preference for abstinence increases the prevalence of infection and worsens everyone's welfare. In contrast, prevention and treatment reduce prevalence and improve payoffs. The results are driven by adverse selection: people who prefer more partners are likelier disease carriers. A given decrease in the number of matches is a smaller proportional reduction for people with many partners, thus increases the fraction of infected in the pool. The greater disease risk further decreases partner-seeking and payoffs.

Jan Christoph Schlegel

Several structural results for the set of competitive equilibria in trading networks with frictions are established: The lattice theorem, the rural hospitals theorem, the existence of side-optimal equilibria, and a group-incentive-compatibility result hold with imperfectly transferable utility and in the presence of frictions. While our results are developed in a trading network model, they also imply analogous (and new) results for exchange economies with combinatorial demand and for two-sided matching markets with transfers.