Learning and Information

这笔赠款支持多个研究项目的继续进行。一个项目研究了随着企业获得更多有关消费者购买习惯的信息而出现的垄断和寡头垄断定价的新问题。 PI 之前的工作研究了软件垄断卖家使用“升级折扣”的情况，以及想要抬高新改进版本价格的卖家对旧商品的“回购”行为。拟议的工作将研究公司试图通过向竞争对手提供特别折扣或其他转换诱因来“挖走”他们的现有客户。该项目将分析短期合同和长期合同可行时的均衡偷猎情况；一个问题是这种价格歧视对消费者福利的总体影响。 第二个项目开发了广泛形式游戏的均衡概念，其基础是玩家可能会持续错误地预测对手将如何应对从未尝试过的行动。之前的工作研究了这样的情况：玩家不知道对手的支付函数的信息，因此无法推断对手将如何应对未经尝试的行动。拟议的工作将研究有关对手收益的先验信息如何限制均衡结果集。这一发展的一个关键问题是应该考虑什么样的关于收益的先验信息。

This grant supports the continuation of several research projects. One project studies new issues in monopoly and oligopoly pricing that arise as firms come to have more information about the purchasing habits of consumers. Previous work by the PI studied the use of `upgrade discounts` by monopoly sellers of software, and `buybacks` of old goods by sellers who want to prop up the price of a new Improved version. The proposed work would study attempts by firms to `poach` the current customers of their competitors by offering them special discounts or other inducements to switch. The project will analyze equilibrium poaching both with short term contracts and when long term contracts are practical; one question will be the overall impact of this sort of price discrimination on consumer welfare. A second project has developed equilibrium concepts for extensive form games, based on the idea that players may persistently make mistaken forecasts of how opponents would respond to actions that have never been tried. Previous work studied the case where players have no information about their opponents' payoff functions, and so are unable to make deductions about how the opponents would respond to untried actions. The proposed work will study the way that prior information about opponents' payoffs can restrict the set of equilibrium outcomes. A key issue in this development is what sort of prior information about payoffs should be considered.