Markets, Mechanism Design, and Market Design

是什么决定了经济中使用的契约、机制、博弈和其他组织形式？竞争在形成激励和体制设计方面发挥什么作用？私人信息如何进入市场，竞争在多大程度上减轻或扩大了由信息不对称引起的低效率？该奖项资助对市场中群体形成的广义模型的研究，为回答这些问题提供基础。经典的一般均衡理论侧重于匿名价格接受代理人，通常忽略任何战略效应或激励。现代的制度、契约和机制设计理论关注的是孤立的激励和私人信息，通常忽略了可能改变组织设计的市场力量。因此，两者都不能解释激励措施如何影响市场，竞争如何在机构之间进行选择，本项目侧重于这些问题，以及更广泛的竞争性市场中的信息不对称问题。该项目的一个核心贡献是开发模型，将契约理论、机制设计和博弈论的关键方面与一般均衡理论相结合。代理人在小群体中进行策略性互动，考虑激励措施及其行为对群体结果的影响，但在市场中匿名交易，价格是给定的。这使研究人员能够研究市场力量，私人信息，激励措施的提供和机构结构之间的相互作用，并评估市场在限制信息不对称引起的低效率方面的作用。应用包括金融市场中的信息不对称，匹配市场中的竞争，大型匹配市场的竞争基础，以及动态匹配市场。这个项目的智力价值是更深入地了解竞争性市场在信息不对称的情况下的运作。该项目的更广泛的影响包括对劳动力市场的洞察以及匹配市场和市场设计的其他设置的动态。

What determines the contracts, mechanisms, games, and other organizational forms that are used in an economy? What role does competition play in shaping incentives and institutional design? How does private information enter markets, and to what extent does competition mitigate or magnify the inefficiencies that arise from asymmetric information? This award funds research on generalized models of group formation in markets to provide a foundation for answering these questions.Classical general equilibrium theory focuses on anonymous price-taking agents, typically ignoring any strategic effects or incentives. Modern theory of institutions, contracts, and mechanism design focuses on incentives and private information in isolation, typically ignoring market forces that might alter organizational design. As a consequence, neither can explain how incentives might influence markets or how competition might select among institutions.This project focuses on these questions, and on asymmetric information in competitive markets more broadly. A central contribution of the project is the development of models that meld key aspects of contract theory, mechanism design and game theory with general equilibrium theory. Agents interact strategically in small groups, taking into account incentives and the effects of their actions on group outcomes, but trade anonymously in markets, taking prices as given. This allows the researchers to study the interplay between market forces, private information, the provision of incentives, and the structure of institutions, and to assess the role of markets in limiting inefficiencies that stem from asymmetric information. Applications include asymmetric information in financial markets, competition in matching markets, competitive foundations for large matching markets, and dynamic matching markets. The intellectual merit of this project is a deeper understanding of the functioning of competitive markets in the presence of asymmetric information. The broader impacts of this project include insights into labor markets and the dynamics of matching markets and other settings of market design.