Economic Theories of Intertemporal Choice and Media Proliferation

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，第二个是关于信仰的两极分化。当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时，诱惑就会出现。一个简单的例子是食物消费；虽然有些人今天可能决定减肥，但实际上实现这个目标意味着每天都要面对吃不健康食品的诱惑。虽然诱惑是一种普遍的经历，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。开发包括诱惑在内的更丰富的经济模型，使我们能够更好地理解导致肥胖等问题的各种人类行为。个人对付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选择的范围。首席研究员建立并分析了一个正式的数学模型，以说明人们是如何在个人完全理性的前提下做出这种承诺的。在该模型中，个体的诱惑成本有两种：试图抵制诱惑的内在成本和诱惑对实际选择的影响。研究者在关于这些成本大小的两种不同假设下分析了该模型。他首先研究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，因此即使没有承诺，个人也可以抵制诱惑。在这两种情况下，该模型都考虑到可能发生的诱惑的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。该模型首先假设选民是完全理性的，他们会寻求信息。他们有各种各样的信息来源。他们知道这些来源（如媒体）是有偏见的，但他们不知道特定来源的确切偏见。该项目分析了媒体的激增（每种媒体都带有明显的偏见）如何改变选民的信念和决策结果。我们的目标是探讨，一般来说，媒体扩散导致的信仰改变的社会成本是否不是直接来自于所做的决定，而是通过过程中的损失：要么通过浪费的控制权竞争，要么通过效率较低的沟通。

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.