The Theory of Dynamic Public Investment Games

动态公共投资博弈理论

• 批准号: 0079352
• 负责人: Steven Matthews
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: University of Pennsylvania
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing grant
• 财政年份: 2000
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2000-07-15 至 2004-06-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0079352&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Theory; Dynamic; Public; Investment; Games

The project develops a theory of dynamic public investment games. These games are intended to model dynamic environments in which current actions have external effects that irreversibly alter future incentives. A canonical example is a fund drive to provide the capital that will produce a future public benefit such as public television programming or a new church complex. Important features of such a drive that characterize a public investment game are: (1) an individual's contribution affects (generally positively) all the other participants; (2) this benefit is irreversible, assuming contributions are nonrefundable; and (3) the contribution alters the incentives of future contributors by enlarging the amount of the public good to which they will contribute.Environments with similar features, and which hence may be usefully viewed through the lens of a public investment game, are far more pervasive than just charity fund drives. They include the following. Firms in an oligopoly invest over time in their own capital stocks, which thus grow and affect all firms via their effect on marginal cost and hence prices. Bargaining when there is no third party to enforce agreements, as in international negotiations over trade, peace, or pollution abatement treaties, often takes place piecemeal over time with future concessions depending on the affirmative steps taken at earlier dates. Payments made over time by lobbyists to legislators generate a bundle of public goods, the legislative outcomes. In a patent race, a firm's current R&D expenditures irreversibly affect the state of knowledge about an innovation that will affect all firms. In a strategic learning environment, the result of an agent's current action provides an informational externality to all agents, irreversibly changing beliefs and hence future incentives. Thus, very abstractly, a dynamic public investment game is intended to model any situation in which "social capital" is created by individual efforts, investments, contributions, or other influence activities that can be taken incrementally over time.This research formulates an appropriate general definition of such dynamic games. It characterizes as much as possible the sequential equilibria of these games, with the goal being to obtain results that rival in completeness those we now have for repeated games. The overall goal is to increase our understanding of these environments, and to provide guidance for how to alter them, e.g., by modifying the governance of lobbying, patents, or charity drives. The central issues to be addressed concern the inefficiencies caused by free riding and coordination failure that these environments exhibit.

该项目开发了动态公共投资博弈理论。这些游戏旨在模拟动态环境，其中当前的行为具有不可逆地改变未来激励的外部影响。一个典型的例子是基金驱动器，以提供资本，将产生未来的公共利益，如公共电视节目或一个新的教堂复杂。公共投资博弈的重要特征是：（1）个人的贡献会影响公共投资的收益。（一般为正数）所有其他参与人;（2）假定缴款不退还，这一福利是不可逆转的;（3）这种贡献通过扩大他们将贡献的公共产品的数量来改变未来贡献者的激励。具有类似特征的环境，因此可以通过公共投资游戏的透镜来有效地看待，这些活动远比慈善基金的推动更为普遍。它们包括以下内容。寡头垄断企业随着时间的推移投资于自己的资本存量，从而增长并通过对边际成本和价格的影响影响所有企业。在没有第三方强制执行协议的情况下，如在贸易、和平或减少污染条约的国际谈判中，讨价还价往往是随着时间的推移而逐步进行的，未来的让步取决于早些时候采取的积极步骤。随着时间的推移，游说者向立法者支付的款项产生了一系列公共产品，即立法成果。在专利竞赛中，一家公司目前的研发支出不可逆转地影响了对一项创新的知识状况，而这项创新将影响所有公司。在战略学习环境中，代理人当前行为的结果为所有代理人提供了信息外部性，不可逆转地改变了信念，从而改变了未来的激励。因此，非常抽象地，一个动态的公共投资游戏的目的是模拟任何情况下，“社会资本”是由个人的努力，投资，贡献，或其他影响活动，可以采取逐步随着时间的推移。本研究制定了一个适当的一般定义，这种动态游戏。它尽可能多地描述这些博弈的序列均衡，目标是获得与我们现在重复博弈的结果在完整性上相媲美的结果。总体目标是增加我们对这些环境的理解，并为如何改变它们提供指导，例如，通过修改游说、专利或慈善活动的治理。需要解决的核心问题是这些环境中出现的搭便车和协调失败造成的效率低下。