Economic Theories of Intertemporal Choice and Media Proliferation

跨期选择和媒体扩散的经济理论

• 批准号: 0820333
• 负责人: Eddie Dekel
• 金额: $ 20.25万
• 依托单位: Northwestern University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2008
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2008-08-01 至 2011-07-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0820333&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Economic; Theories; Intertemporal; Choice; Media

The project includes two research projects in economic theory. One concerns how to model temptation and the second concerns polarization of beliefs. Temptation occurs in contexts where an individual understands that he may make future choices that are not in line with his or her long-run objectives. A simple example is food consumption; while someone may decide today to lose weight, actually acheiving this objective means facing daily temptation to eat unhealthy foods. While temptation is a universal experience, the formal economic model of how individuals make decisions does not include the possibility of temptation. Developing richer economic models that includes temptation allows us to better understand a wide range of human behavior that contributes to problems like obesity.One way that individuals deal with temptations is by restricting the range of their future choices through unbreakable commitments they make today. The principal investigator builds and analyzes a formal mathematical model of how people make such commitments assuming that individuals are fully rational. In the model, there are two costs of temptation for individuals: the internal cost of attempting to resist the temptation and the effect of temptation on actual choice. The investigator analyzes the model under two different assumptions about the size of these costs. He first examines the case where the cost of resisting temptation is so high that the individual always succumbs to temptation. He then considers the case where the cost of temptation is lower, so an individual can resist temptation even without a commitment. In both cases the model allows for uncertainty about the extent and type of temptation that might occur. The second project is also formal economic theory using mathematical modeling techniques. Here the PI develops and analyzes a model of how media bias may affect viewers' beliefs and decisions. The model starts with the assumption that individual voters are fully rational and seek information. They have a variety of information sources. They know that these sources (eg, the media) are biased, but they do not know the exact bias of a particular source. The project analyzes how the proliferation of media, each with a distinct bias, changes voter beliefs and decision outcomes. The goal is to explore whether in general the social costs of the change in beliefs due to media proliferation are not directly from the decisions made, but through losses in the process: either through wasteful competition for control or less efficient communication.

该项目包括两个经济理论研究项目。 一个是关于如何模拟诱惑，第二个是关于信念的两极分化。 诱惑发生在一个人明白他可能会做出与他或她的长期目标不一致的未来选择的情况下。 一个简单的例子是食物消费;虽然今天有人可能决定减肥，但实际上实现这一目标意味着每天都要面对吃不健康食物的诱惑。虽然诱惑是一种普遍的经验，但个人如何做出决定的正式经济模型并不包括诱惑的可能性。 开发出包含诱惑的更丰富的经济模型，可以让我们更好地理解导致肥胖等问题的各种人类行为。个人应对诱惑的一种方法是通过今天做出的牢不可破的承诺来限制他们未来的选择范围。主要研究者建立并分析了一个正式的数学模型，假设个人是完全理性的，人们如何做出这样的承诺。 在该模型中，个人的诱惑成本有两个：试图抵制诱惑的内部成本和诱惑对实际选择的影响。研究人员在两个不同的假设下分析了这些成本的大小模型。 他首先考察了抵制诱惑的成本如此之高以至于个人总是屈服于诱惑的情况。然后，他考虑了诱惑成本较低的情况，因此一个人即使没有承诺也可以抵制诱惑。 在这两种情况下，模型考虑到可能发生的诱惑程度和类型的不确定性。 第二个项目也是使用数学建模技术的正式经济理论。 在这里，PI开发并分析了媒体偏见如何影响观众的信念和决定的模型。 该模型以个体选民是完全理性的并寻求信息的假设开始。 他们有各种各样的信息来源。 他们知道这些消息来源（如媒体）是有偏见的，但他们不知道特定消息来源的确切偏见。该项目分析了媒体的扩散，每一个不同的偏见，如何改变选民的信念和决策结果。 我们的目标是探讨是否在一般情况下，由于媒体的扩散，在信仰的变化的社会成本不是直接从所作的决定，但通过在这个过程中的损失：无论是通过浪费的控制竞争或效率较低的沟通。