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作者：Letina, Igor; Liu, Shuo; Netzer, Nick
作者单位：University of Bern; Peking University; University of Zurich
摘要：We consider the design of contests when the principal can choose both the prize profile and how the prizes are allocated as a function of a possibly noisy signal about the agents' efforts. We provide sufficient conditions that guarantee optimality of a contest. Optimal contests have a minimally competitive prize profile and an intermediate degree of competitiveness in the contest success function. Whenever observation is not too noisy, the optimum can be achieved by an all-pay contest with a c...
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作者：Dasaratha, Krishna
作者单位：Boston University
摘要：Motivated by epidemics such as COVID-19, we study the spread of a contagious disease when behavior responds to the disease's prevalence. We extend the SIR epidemiological model to include endogenous meeting rates. Individuals benefit from economic activity, but activity involves interactions with potentially infected individuals. The main focus is a theoretical analysis of contagion dynamics and behavioral responses to changes in risk. We obtain a simple condition for when public-health interv...
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作者：Yang, Kai Hao; Zentefis, Alexander K.
作者单位：Yale University
摘要：We consider the problem of how to regulate an oligopoly when firms have private information about their costs. In the environment, consumers make discrete choices over goods, and minimal structure is placed on the manner in which firms compete. In the optimal regulatory policy, firms compete on price margins, and based on firms' prices, the regulator charges them taxes or give them subsidies, and imposes on each firm a yardstick price cap that depends on the posted prices of competing firms. &...
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作者：Lanzara, Gianandrea; Santacesaria, Matteo
作者单位：Bocconi University; University of Genoa
摘要：This paper proposes a spatial model with a realistic geography where a continuous distribution of agents (e.g., farmers) engages in economic interactions with one location from a finite set (e.g., cities). The spatial structure of the equilibrium consists of a tessellation, i.e., a partition of space into a collection of mutually exclusive market areas. After proving the existence of a unique equilibrium, we characterize how the location of borders and, in the case with mobile labor, the set o...
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作者：Shishkin, Denis; Ortoleva, Pietro
作者单位：University of California System; University of California San Diego; Princeton University; Princeton University
摘要：With standard models of updating under ambiguity, new information may increase the amount of relevant ambiguity: the set of beliefs may 'dilate.' We experimentally test one sharp case: agents bet on a risky urn and get information that is truthful or not based on the draw from an Ellsberg urn. With common models, the set of beliefs dilates, and the value of bets decreases for ambiguity-averse agents and increases for ambiguity-seeking ones. Instead, we find that the value of bets does not chan...
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作者：Bhaskar, V; Roketskiy, Nikita
作者单位：University of Texas System; University of Texas Austin; Centre for Economic Policy Research - UK; University of London; University College London
摘要：We examine the ratchet effect under moral hazard and symmetric learning by worker and firm about new technology. Shirking increases the worker's future payoffs, since the firm overestimates job difficulty. Highpowered incentives to deter shirking induce the agent to over-work, since he can quit if the firm thinks the job is too easy. With continuous effort choices, no deterministic interior effort is implementable. We provide conditions under which randomized effort is implementable, so that a...
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作者：Gersbach, Hans; Jackson, Matthew O.; Muller, Philippe; Tejada, Oriol
作者单位：Swiss Federal Institutes of Technology Domain; ETH Zurich; Stanford University; Swiss Federal Institutes of Technology Domain; ETH Zurich; University of Barcelona
摘要：We analyze two-party electoral competition with a one-dimensional policy space, costly policy changes, and random negative shocks to a party's viability over an infinite horizon. We show the existence and uniqueness of stationary Markov perfect equilibria in which parties use so-called simple strategies. Regard-less of the initial policy, party choices converge in the long run to a stochastic alternation between two policies, with transitions occurring if and only if parties suffer a negative ...
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作者：Deng, Shanglyu
作者单位：University of Macau
摘要：A speculator can take advantage of a procurement auction by acquiring items for sale before the auction. The accumulated market power can then be exercised in the auction and may lead to a large enough gain to cover the acquisition costs. I show that speculation always generates a positive expected profit in secondprice auctions but could be unprofitable in first-price auctions. In the case where speculation is profitable in first-price auctions, it is more profitable in second-price auctions....
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作者：Walker-Jones, David
作者单位：University of Surrey
摘要：This paper studies a new measure for the cost of learning that allows the different attributes of the options faced by an agent to differ in their associated learning costs. The new measure maintains the tractability of Shannon's classic measure but produces richer choice predictions and identifies a new form of informational bias significant for welfare and counterfactual analysis that is conducted with the multinomial logit model. Necessary and sufficient conditions are provided for optimal ...
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作者：Nezafat, Mahdi; Schroder, Mark
作者单位：University of Michigan System; University of Michigan; Michigan State University; Michigan State University's Broad College of Business
摘要：In the standard perfectly competitive rational expectations model of information acquisition, the marginal benefit of private information to each trader is always positive. We show that with imperfect competition, characterized by a finite number of traders, the value of private information can be negative, resulting in a zero-information equilibrium even if information is free. This zero-information equilibrium arises when noise-trading volume is sufficiently large that price informativeness ...
