Collaborative Research: Studies of Innovation and Information

该提案由两个不同的项目组成。第一个项目将从理论上研究各种反垄断政策和以高创新率和“赢者通吃”竞争为特征的行业的影响。这个问题没有得到很好的理解，因为反垄断分析传统上并不关注创新问题。然而，这些担忧构成了反垄断政策日益重要的一个方面。最近的反垄断案件正是集中在这个问题上。最近的美国诉微软案就是一个很好的例子，在该案中，杰出的经济学家在反垄断执法对创新和行业未来生产力的影响方面存在根本性的分歧。第二个项目将研究在群体决策过程中，当提供信息的个体具有群体其他成员无法观察到的偏好和动机时，个体之间的信息交换是如何变化的。这种不可观察的偏见存在于许多现实世界的决策情境中。然而，这种偏见对所达成的决策类型的影响以及对如何优化决策结构的影响并没有被经济学家很好地理解。第一个项目的广泛影响将延伸到改善美国经济中一个关键部门的反垄断政策。第二个项目的广泛影响将来自为现实世界的组织设计更好的决策程序。

This proposal consists of two distinct projects. The first project will study theoretically the effects of various antitrust policies and industries that are characterized by high rate of innovation and "winner-take-all" competition. This issue is not well understood, as antitrust analysis has traditionally not focused on issues of innovation. Yet such concerns form an increasingly important aspect of antitrust policy. Recent antitrust cases focus on precisely this issue. An excellent example is the recent U.S. versus Microsoft case, in which distinguished economists were fundamentally in disagreement about the effects of antitrust enforcement on innovation and future productivity of the industry.The second project will study the ways in which information exchange among individuals engaged in a group decision-making process change when the individuals providing information have preferences and motives that are unobservable to the other members of the group. This kind of unobservable bias is present in many real world decision-making situations. However, the effects of this bias on the kind of decision that are reached and the implications for how to optimally structure decision-making are not well understood by economists.The broader impacts of the first project will extend to improving antitrust policy in a crucial sector of the American economy. The broader impacts of the second project will come from designing better decision-making procedures for real world organizations.