Doctoral Dissertation Research in Economics: An Experimental Comparison of Supermodular Lindahl Mechanisms

经济学博士论文研究：超模林达尔机制的实验比较

• 批准号: 0850788
• 负责人: John Wooders
• 金额: $ 0.5万
• 依托单位: University of Arizona
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2009
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2009-02-15 至 2011-01-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0850788&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Research; Economics; Experimental

The free rider problem in public good economies has led to the theoretical development of incentive compatible institutions that yield efficient outcomes. Earlier experimental work on this class of institutions has almost exclusively focused on the stability properties of these institutions finding that institutions with strong stability properties were better at achieving their desired allocation. In this doctoral dissertation grant focuses on another important issue in economic design. Specifically, the project focuses on the role of informational complexity, hereafter complexity, in the design of economic institutions. An institution is more complex if it requires people to know more information when making their decisions. Some institutions become more complex as the economy grows in size. This study proposes to examine information complexity by comparing the performance of two stable efficient institutions that vary in the way their information requirement changes when the economy gets bigger. This is the first experimental study to: (a) focus on how an institution?s information requirement changes with the size of the economy; (b) to compare two supermodular Lindahl mechanisms; (c) to test the institution proposed by Van Essen (2008). It also provides further evidence on the scope of the applicability of incentive compatible mechanisms in the context of achieving socially desirable outcomes.Broader Impact: The study of how decisions are affected by the information requirements of institutional arrangements is important in many areas of economics and computer science. This study provides key insights into these properties by examining experimentally two different institutions whose allocation goal is the same, but they vary in the way their informational requirement changes for different sized economies.

公共产品经济中的搭便车问题导致了产生有效结果的激励相容制度的理论发展。早期对这类机构的实验工作几乎完全集中在这些机构的稳定性上，发现稳定性强的机构更能实现预期的分配。在这篇博士论文中，拨款集中在经济设计的另一个重要问题上。具体而言，该项目侧重于信息复杂性（以下简称复杂性）在经济制度设计中的作用。如果一个制度要求人们在做决定时了解更多的信息，那么它就更复杂。随着经济规模的扩大，一些机构变得更加复杂。本研究拟通过比较两种稳定有效的制度的绩效来检验信息复杂性，这两种制度的信息需求随经济规模的增大而变化。这是第一个实验研究：(a)关注一个机构如何？信息需求随着经济规模的变化而变化；(b)比较两种超模Lindahl机制；(c)检验Van Essen（2008）提出的制度。它还提供了进一步的证据，说明在实现社会理想结果的背景下，激励相容机制的适用性范围。更广泛的影响：研究制度安排的信息需求如何影响决策，在经济学和计算机科学的许多领域都很重要。本研究通过实验考察两种不同的制度，提供了对这些属性的关键见解，这两种制度的分配目标相同，但它们在不同规模的经济体中信息需求变化的方式不同。