Econometric Analysis of Strategic-Interaction Models under Flexible Behavioral Assumptions

该项目致力于模型的计量经济学研究，其中经济代理人（个人，公司，工会，政府等）在不完全信息的环境中相互作用。 在这些设置中，每个代理人的观察到的行为至少部分地取决于她的主观和未观察到的（研究人员）对他人的预期选择的信念。绝大多数现有的计量经济学工作，这些模型假设未观察到的信念是一致的均衡行为，这强加了极端的假设代理人的理性和危害的鲁棒性和有效性的估计结果。这个项目削弱了这种限制性的假设，并假设代理人的未观察到的信念只是“合理化”的意义上，他们不分配积极的概率对手的行动，严格控制。合理化的概念已经被博弈论家彻底研究过了，但还没有？到目前为止，它已被正式纳入计量经济学分析。 它包括均衡信念作为一个特例，但允许广泛的替代行为。首先，它描述了一个给定模型的统计特征可以在合理化信念的唯一假设下被识别。其次，它开发了用于估计和推断所识别特征的统计方法。 使用观察到的行为和其他可观察到的功能的代理（如果有的话），这些方法揭示的问题，如：有多少代理人的行动受到他人的预期选择，如果他们的信念只假设满足最低限度的合理性要求？合理性的上限能被确定吗？纳什均衡能被排除吗？代理人使用哪些可用信息来构建他们的信念？在灵活的行为假设下的反事实练习（例如，假设政策分析的影响）也是可能的。这些方法可以应用于各种各样的现实世界的设置，包括：拍卖，市场进入/退出，公司之间的互动，公司或个人的位置模型，个人选择与同行效应的模型等，他们也特别适合实验数据集，其可用性一直在稳步增加，在最近的过去。研究项目的更广泛影响：如果项目超出了为现有文献提供新方法并吸引该主题研究专家的注意力，则会产生更广泛的影响。一个主要目标是设计课程，讲习班和研讨会，不仅针对先进的经济学博士生，但对其他社会科学学科的学生和研究人员有兴趣的估计和推理的互动为基础的模型。这些课程将不仅研究理论，而且还研究将这些方法应用于真实的数据所涉及的方法和计算问题。除此之外，还将举办讲习班、研讨会和由该领域著名专家主讲的讲座。该项目旨在将博弈论家，计量经济学家，应用经济学家和决策者聚集在一起，在灵活的行为假设下，在复杂的互动环境中进行政策分析。 将广泛传播这一项目产生的所有计算机数据程序、讲义和研究论文。

This project is devoted to the econometric study of models where economic agents (individuals, firms, unions, governments, etc.) interact with each other in an incomplete information environment. In these settings, each agent's observed behavior is at least partially determined by her subjective and unobserved (to the researcher) beliefs about the expected choices of others. The vast majority of existing econometric work for these models assumes that unobserved beliefs are consistent with equilibrium behavior, which imposes extreme assumptions about agents' rationality and jeopardizes the robustness and validity of the estimation results. This project weakens this restrictive assumption and assumes instead that agents' unobserved beliefs are only "rationalizable" in the sense that they do not assign positive probability to opponents' actions that are strictly dominated. The notion of rationalizability has been thoroughly studied by game theorists but has not ?until now- been formally incorporated into econometric analysis. It includes equilibrium beliefs as a special case, but allows for a wide range of alternative behavior.Methodologically, this research project is two-pronged. First, it characterizes which statistical features of a given model can be identified under the sole assumption of rationalizable beliefs. Second, it develops statistical methods for estimation and inference of the identified features. Using observed behavior and other observable features of agents (if any), these methods shed light on questions such as: How much are agents' actions affected by the expected choices of others if their beliefs are only assumed to satisfy a minimal rationality requirement? Can an upper bound for rationality be identified? Can Nash equilibrium be ruled out? What pieces of available information do agents use to construct their beliefs? Counterfactual exercises (e.g, the effect of hypothetical policy analysis) under flexible behavioral assumptions are also made possible. The methods can be applied to a wide variety of real-world settings, including: Auctions, market entry/exit, interaction among firms, location models for firms or individuals, models of individual choices with peer-effects, etc. They are also especially amenable to experimental data sets, whose availability has been steadily increasing in the recent past. Broader Impacts of Research Project:The broader impact if the project goes beyond contributing new methods to the existing literature and attracting the attention of research experts in the subject. A major goal is the design of courses, workshops and seminars aimed not only to advanced economics doctoral students, but to students and researchers of other social science disciplines interested in estimation and inference in interactions-based models. These courses would study not only the theory, but also the methodological and computational issues involved in the implementation of these methods to real data. They will be complemented by workshops, seminars and lectures by prominent experts in the subject. This project is designed to bring together game theorists, econometricians, applied economists and decision-makers in need of policy analysis in complicated interactions settings under flexible behavioral assumptions. All computer data programs, lecture notes and research papers which will result from this project will be widely disseminated.