Mechanism design with costly verification

机制设计与昂贵的验证

• 批准号: 1227434
• 负责人: Eddie Dekel
• 金额: $ 27.53万
• 依托单位: Northwestern University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2012
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2012-09-01 至 2016-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1227434&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Mechanism; design; costly; verification

This award funds three projects in economic theory. The first part of the research studies optimal mechanisms when the principal has the opportunity to verify the types of the agents at a cost. For example, consider the problem faced by the head of an organization who must decide which of several divisions in the organization will be allowed a new hire. The head wants to allocate this job slot to the division that would fill the position in the way that best promotes the organization as a whole. However, each division has more information than the leader about its own job applicants. The head may want to consider investing some money in verifying the statements made by each division about the job applicants; by doing this the head can promote the organization's overall interests. But at the same time the head must remember that the resources spent to verify information are not available to meet the organization's other goals. The second project considers a particular class of matching models. In this class of models, participants in the match will make decisions in advance of the match about individual career choice. Each person must weigh both the satisfaction and pay that each career provides. However, people also understand that they will participate in the match and may find a partner. Partners share income; therefore someone who anticipates matching to a high-income partner has an incentive to choose a highly satisfying but low paying job.The third project looks at the incentives that affect a firm's choice of certain product characteristics. Recently economists have developed a number of models of "temptation", in which consumers make decisions today while perhaps under-estimating their ability to control their actions tomorrow. In these models, the characteristics of the products available to consumers are taken as given. However, in reality firms often must choose the degree to which a specific product is "tempting"; eg, the nicotine level in a cigarette, the alcohol level in liquor, etc. This project will consider how firms make these choices, and how government policies such as "sin taxes" affect these choices.These projects are each applicable to the design of policies and incentive plans to address a variety of social problems.

该奖项资助经济理论方面的三个项目。研究的第一部分研究了当委托人有机会以成本验证代理人的类型时的最优机制。例如，考虑组织负责人面临的问题，他必须决定组织中的几个部门中的哪个部门将被允许聘用新员工。负责人希望将这个职位分配给能够以最好的方式促进组织整体发展的部门。然而，每个部门都比领导拥有更多关于自己求职者的信息。负责人可能会考虑投入一些资金来核实每个部门对求职者的陈述；这样做可以促进组织的整体利益。但与此同时，负责人必须记住，用于核实信息的资源不能用于实现组织的其他目标。第二个项目考虑了一类特定的匹配模型。在这一类模型中，比赛的参与者将在比赛前就个人的职业选择做出决定。每个人都必须权衡每个职业所带来的满足感和报酬。不过，人们也明白，他们会参加比赛，可能会找到搭档。合作伙伴分享收入；因此，预期与高收入合作伙伴匹配的人有动力选择一份满意度高但报酬低的工作。第三个项目着眼于影响公司选择某些产品特征的激励因素。最近，经济学家开发了许多“诱惑”模型，即消费者在今天做出决定的同时，可能低估了他们控制明天行为的能力。在这些模型中，消费者可获得的产品的特征被认为是给定的。然而，在现实中，公司往往必须选择特定产品的“诱人”程度；例如，香烟中的尼古丁水平、白酒中的酒精水平等。这个项目将考虑公司如何做出这些选择，以及政府政策(如“罪恶税”)如何影响这些选择。这些项目都适用于政策和激励计划的设计，以解决各种社会问题。