Quantal response equilibria with heterogeneous agents

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Golman, Russell
• 署名单位: University of Michigan System; University of Michigan
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC THEORY
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0022-0531
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jet.2011.06.007
• 发表日期: 2011
• 页码: 2013-2028
• 关键词: Quantal response equilibria; bounded rationality; Representative agent; Heterogeneity

摘要

This paper introduces a model of quantal response equilibrium with heterogeneous agents and demonstrates the existence of a representative agent for such populations. Except in rare cases, the representative agent's noise terms cannot be independently and identically distributed across the set of actions, even if that is assumed for the individual agents. This result demonstrates a fundamental difference between a representative agent and truly heterogeneous quantal responders and suggests that when fitting quantal response specifications to aggregate data from a population of subjects, the noise terms should be allowed to be jointly dependent across actions. Even though this introduces additional degrees of freedom, it makes the model well specified. The representative agent inherits a regular quantal response function from the actual agents, so this model does impose falsifiable restrictions. (C) 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.