The Economics of Self-Selection

在过去十年中，非合作博弈理论和应用该理论解释经济现象都取得了重大进展。这一建议的主要目标是发展更好的理论见解，当个人拥有不同的信息时，制度的作用。制度安排的一个重要子类处理一个问题。支持竞争。在这种“竞赛”中，代理们为了某种无形的奖励而相互竞争。这可能会以争夺某些专利程序、竞标合同或利益集团为追求政治回报而支出的形式出现。研究的第一部分涉及最后一项活动的更基本模型的发展。目标是增强我们对政治奖励（如特许经营权或关税壁垒）的价值与代理人愿意为追求这一奖励而花费的资源之间关系的理解。项目的第二部分是对拍卖理论的拓展，特别是进一步探讨了常见的密封高价拍卖和公开升标拍卖的性质。研究的最后一部分是对两者的基本模型进行考察。与私人信息的单边竞争。为了泄露私人信息，个人可能会进行代价高昂的信号传递活动。该项目的目标是阐明选择信号的均衡。现在有相当多的研究正式描述了一种“竞争”均衡，在这种均衡中，产品质量的差异只是因为销售者从事一些表明这种差异的活动而被了解的。然而，当买方必须先行动时，一个困难的理论问题仍有待解决。

Over the last ten years there have been very significant advances in both the theory of noncooperative games and in the application of the theory to explain economic phenomena. The primary goal of this proposal is to develop better theoretical insights into the role of institutions when individuals have different information. An important subclass of institutional arrangements deal with one.sided competition. In such "contests" agents compete with each other for some form of invisible reward. This may take the form of a race for some patentable process, bidding for a contract or spending by interest groups in the pursuit of a political payoff. The first part of the research is concerned with the development of a more basic model of this last activity. The objective is to enhance our understanding of the relationship between the value of the political prize (such as a franchise or tariff barrier) and the resources that agents are willing to spend in pursuit of this prize. The second part of the project involves extending the theory of auctions, in particular, further exploring the properties of the common sealed high bid and open ascending bid auctions. The final part of the research is to investigate the basic model of two.sided competition with private information. To reveal private information, individuals can undertake costly signalling activity. The goal of the project is to shed light on the equilibrium of choice signals. There is now a considerable body of research formally characterizing a "competitive" equilibrium in which differences in product quality are only learned because sellers undertake some activity which signals such differences. A difficult theoretical problem, however, remains to be resolved when it is that the buyers must move first.