Collaborative Research: Studies of Innovation and Information

该提案包括两个不同的项目。第一个项目将从理论上研究各种反托拉斯政策和以高革新率和“赢者通吃”竞争为特点的产业的影响。这一问题没有得到很好的理解，因为反托拉斯分析传统上并不侧重于创新问题。 然而，这种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。一个很好的例子是最近的美国诉微软案，第二个项目将研究参与群体决策的个人之间的信息交换方式，当提供信息的个人具有群体中其他成员无法观察到的偏好和动机时，改变过程。这种不可观察的偏见存在于许多真实的世界决策情况中。然而，这种偏见对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，第一个项目的更广泛影响将扩展到改善美国经济关键部门的反垄断政策。第二个项目的更广泛影响将来自为真实的世界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.