Collaborative Research: Robust Predictions In Games With Private Information

在许多经济环境中，参与者对其处境的相关方面没有相同的信息。例如，在金融市场中，每个投资者可能有关于资产或公司潜在价值的不同信息。在产品市场上，每个竞争对手可能都有关于其成本结构的私人信息。在拍卖中，如联邦通信委员会组织的无线频谱拍卖或美国内政部拍卖的海上石油区块，投标人有关于他们估值的私人信息，也有一些关于竞争对手估值的可能有噪音的信息。代理人的私人信息，无论是关于他/她自己的估值，还是关于竞争代理人的估值，都将决定代理人的行为和策略。但在实践中，理论和/或实证分析师并不清楚经济主体知道什么，特别是他们对彼此知道什么或不知道什么。从政策的角度来看，缺失和不完整的信息也是高度相关的，因为许多市场的监管或监管当局面临着类似的信息约束。PI开发了一些方法，允许预测经济主体的行为和在这种情况下的市场分配。这些预测对代理人的一类私人信息结构是稳健的。它们确定了相互作用的性质和市场的条件，在这些条件下，可以对经济行为做出独特的预测。当这些条件不满足时，PIS对可能的经济结果的分布建立了稳健的界限，特别是结果的平均值和方差。他们使用这些界限来预测市场中信息共享的福利影响。他们还利用这个界限来设计健壮的机制，如拍卖和投票方法，这些机制在许多信息环境中都表现良好。这个项目提供了一个经济理论，可以导致市场和机制设计问题的实际解决方案。它也为未来的计量经济学工作提供了理论基础，该工作的目的是在研究人员不知道市场信息结构的情况下测试模型。这项研究将对使用博弈论作为基本工具的许多不同的社会科学领域产生更广泛的影响。此外，该项目对反垄断政策也有直接影响，因为是否允许卖家分享信息是一个价格操纵政策的问题。

In many economic environments the participants do not have the same informationabout the relevant aspects of their situation. For example, in a financial market eachinvestor may have different pieces of information about the underlying value of an assetor a company. In product markets, each competiting firm may have private informationabout its cost structure. In auctions, such as the wireless spectrum auctions organizedby the Federal Communications Commission or the offshore oil tracts auctioned off bythe U.S. Department of the Interior, the bidders have private information about theirvaluations and also some, possibly noisy, information about the valuations of theircompetitors.The private information of an agent, whether it is about his/her own valuations or thevaluations of the competing agents will determine the behavior and the strategy of theagent. But in practice, the theoretical and/or empirical analysts do not have a clearunderstanding of what the economic agents know and, in particular, what they do or donot know about each other. The missing and incomplete information si also highlyrelevant from a policy perspective as the supervising or regulatory authority in manymarkets face similar informational constraints.The PIs develop methods that allow predictions about the behavior of economic agentsand the reulting market allocations in such settings. These predictions are robust to alarge class of private information structures by the agents. They identify conditions onthe nature of the interaction and the market under which it is possible to make uniquepredictions about economic behavior. When these conditions are not met, the PIsestablish robust bounds on the distribution of possible economic outcomes, especiallythe mean and the variance of the outcomes. They use these bounds to predict thewelfare impact of information sharing in markets. They also use the bounds to designrobust mechanisms, such as auction and voting methods, that perform well in manyinformation environments.This project provides an economic theory that can lead to practical solutions to marketand mechanism design problems. It also provides a theoretical foundation for futurework in econometrics aimed at testing models in situations where the researcher doesnot know the market's information structure.This research will have broader impacts for the many different areas of social sciencethat use game theory as a fundamental tool. In addition, the project has directimplications for antitrust policy, since whether or not to allow sellers to share informationis a question for price-fixing policy.