Timing Games in Economics

经济学中的计时博弈

• 批准号: 0241346
• 负责人: Lones Smith
• 金额: $ 24.75万
• 依托单位: Regents of the University of Michigan - Ann Arbor
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2003
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2003-07-01 至 2007-06-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0241346&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Timing; Games; Economics

This project explores issues of timing in economics and game theory. The first part concerns timing games - dynamic games where players need only decide when to stop. In the classic War of Attrition, later stoppers enjoy greater payoffs, while the reverse holds in the Pre-emption Game. While the literature dates back to the 1950's, only these extreme cases have been analyzed. But in most economic contexts, being first or last is not desired. This part introduces and fleshes out this larger class of timing games with general rank-dependent rewards. The analysis employs tools novel to economics, as it turns on the theory of Totally Positive functions. A second timing project analyzes a specific timing game in political economy. Recent developments in pivot voting theory suggest that unanimous jury verdicts are inefficient. This part recasts the jury decision not as a one-shot vote, but as a dynamic story of voting by individuals facing decision costs. Simply put, if delay hurts, then unanimity is the informationally optimal rule. What emerges is a rich and plausible story of how individuals' signal the strength of their information by holding out (as in dynamic auction theory), but later on are willing to switch sides of the vote parroting others (quite unlike auction theory). A final political economy timing project concerns decision theory. Namely, in parliamentary democracies like Britain and Canada, the incumbent government has the option to call an election any time before its term expires. This project sets up a novel continuous time Bayesian model of the government's learning problem; preliminary tests reveal a good predictive match against British election data. The theory developed is inspired by the open problem of how to price put options in finance; however, electoral timing is a renewable put option. While the first two subprojects are purely theoretical, this part also envisions a numerical side, as well as some matching. This project offers a range of mostly substantive and cross-disciplinary advances. The first project provides a general analysis of models where "the early bird gets the worm, but the first one does not." This should have a wide range of broad impacts and applications across the social sciences - from market entry and investment decisions (industrial organization), to behavior in stock market bubbles (finance), or the phenomenon of being fashionably late, or joining a fashion (sociology). Since decisions about timing are often the easiest bits of industry data that can be observed without error, these applications should have much empirical content. The jury project counters a recent influential theoretical arguments for the inferiority of unanimous jury verdicts. The analysis should also introduce a simple framework for thinking about costly decision-making in committees. The election timing project shows how to use insights from finance theory in political economy. It should inform the debate on constitutional reform in new democracies, highlighting the incumbent advantage without fixed election cycles.

这个项目探讨了经济学和博弈论中的时间问题。第一部分是关于计时游戏--动态游戏，玩家只需要决定何时停止。在经典的“限制战”中，后来的阻止者享有更大的收益，而在“先发制人”博弈中则相反。虽然文献可以追溯到20世纪50年代，但只分析了这些极端情况。但在大多数经济环境中，做第一或最后一个并不可取。这一部分介绍并充实了这一更大类的具有一般等级依赖奖励的计时游戏。 该分析采用了经济学中新颖的工具，因为它开启了完全正函数理论。 第二个计时项目分析了政治经济学中的一个特定的计时游戏。枢纽投票理论的最新发展表明，陪审团的一致裁决是低效的。这一部分将陪审团的决定重新定义为一次投票，而不是一次投票，而是一个由面临决策成本的个人投票的动态故事。简单地说，如果延迟有害，那么重复性是信息上最优的规则。由此产生的是一个丰富而合理的故事，即个人如何通过坚持（如动态拍卖理论）来表明他们的信息的强度，但后来又愿意改变投票立场，模仿他人（与拍卖理论完全不同）。最后一个政治经济学计时项目涉及决策理论。也就是说，在英国和加拿大这样的议会民主国家，现任政府可以在任期届满前的任何时候举行选举。 该项目建立了一个新的连续时间贝叶斯模型的政府的学习问题，初步测试显示了良好的预测匹配对英国的选举数据。开发的理论的灵感来自于如何定价金融看跌期权的公开问题，然而，选举时间是一个可再生的看跌期权。虽然前两个子项目是纯理论的，这一部分也设想了一个数字方面，以及一些匹配。该项目提供了一系列实质性和跨学科的进展。第一个项目提供了一个模型的一般分析，其中“早起的鸟儿有虫吃，但第一个没有。“这应该在社会科学中产生广泛的影响和应用-从市场进入和投资决策（产业组织），到股市泡沫中的行为（金融），或时尚迟到的现象，或加入时尚（社会学）。由于关于时间的决策通常是可以无错误地观察到的最简单的行业数据，这些应用程序应该有很多经验内容。陪审团项目反驳了最近一个有影响力的理论论点，即陪审团一致裁决的劣性。分析还应该引入一个简单的框架，以思考委员会中代价高昂的决策。选举时间项目展示了如何在政治经济学中使用金融理论的见解。它应该为新民主国家的宪政改革辩论提供信息，突出没有固定选举周期的现任者的优势。