Signaling and Matching

信令和匹配

• 批准号: 1851449
• 负责人: Andrew Postlewaite
• 金额: $ 44.76万
• 依托单位: University of Pennsylvania
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2019
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2019-07-15 至 2023-06-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1851449&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Signaling; Matching

This award funds research in the economic theory of matching and signaling. Many economic and social interactions are well "described as two" sided markets. Examples include matching students to schools, residents to hospitals and workers to firms. Economists have studied all of these situations using the tools of economic theory. This research typically assumes that all parties know the consequences from any possible match, so that participating individuals can evaluate the benefits of any possible match. This assumption is not very realistic. For example, colleges do not directly know the ability of applicants. They do however have access to tests (such as the SAT) and other signals of ability. When applicants understand that tests and other signals will be used to assess underlying ability, they will prepare for the tests as well as attempt to manipulate the signals. This raises the possibility that such test preparation will make it more difficult for schools to accurately evaluate the ability of applicants, leading to schools using additional criteria to evaluate students (such as extracurricular activities). Applicants will of course respond to this by changing their extracurricular behavior. The result is an arms race with colleges looking at various school extracurricular activities, athletic participation, violin compositions, starting charities, etc. Students then engage in these activities because even though their signaling value is small when everyone is doing so, not engaging becomes a negative signal. A similar dynamic may exist in job markets. This award will fund research to understand the underlying forces that govern this kind of strategic interaction between organizations who choose the criteria by which to evaluate applicants and the response of applicants to increasingly more demanding criteria. The basic model will be a two-sided market of incomplete information. One side (applicants) have privately known abilities while the other side (schools or firms) use signals to infer the ability of students. In the absence of test preparation, standard positive assortative matching will match higher signaling students with higher quality schools. Test prep is a strategic choice by students that influences the inferences schools will make about ability, quite possibly decreasing the informativeness of the test. The decreased informativeness of test scores leads schools to add additional signaling variables related to ability, for example, taking advanced placement (AP) courses. While in the absence of manipulation, having taken AP courses might be informative about ability, once students learn that colleges pay attention to this, many students who have no interest in those courses may take them to "signal" their ability. This decreases the informativeness of this signal, just as test prep decreased the informativeness of tests. A central focus of the investigation is the endogeneity of potential signals chosen by the uninformed schools. Understanding the nature of this endogeneity will shed light on the vulnerability to manipulation of different activities and so the stability over time of equilibrium sets of signaling activities.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

该奖项资助了匹配和信号经济学理论的研究。许多经济和社会互动被很好地描述为“双边”市场。例如，将学生与学校、居民与医院、工人与公司相匹配。经济学家使用经济理论的工具研究了所有这些情况。这项研究通常假设所有各方都知道任何可能匹配的后果，因此参与的个人可以评估任何可能匹配的好处。这个假设不太现实。例如，大学并不直接了解申请者的能力。然而，他们确实有机会参加考试（如SAT）和其他能力指标。当申请人明白测试和其他信号将被用来评估潜在的能力时，他们会为测试做准备，并试图操纵这些信号。因此，这种应试准备有可能会使学校难以准确地评估申请者的能力，从而导致学校使用额外的标准（如课外活动）来评估学生。申请人当然会通过改变他们的课外行为来回应这一点。结果是一场军备竞赛，各大学都在关注各种学校课外活动、体育活动、小提琴创作、慈善事业等。学生们参与到这些活动中来，因为即使每个人都这样做，他们的信号价值很小，但不参与就变成了一个消极的信号。就业市场可能也存在类似的动态。该奖项将资助研究，以了解管理组织之间的这种战略互动的潜在力量，这些组织选择评估申请人的标准，以及申请人对日益苛刻的标准的反应。基本模型将是一个不完全信息的双边市场。一方（申请人）私下知道自己的能力，而另一方（学校或公司）利用信号来推断学生的能力。在没有考试准备的情况下，标准的正分类匹配将使高信号的学生与高质量的学校相匹配。备考是学生的一种策略选择，它会影响学校对学生能力的判断，很可能会降低考试的信息量。考试成绩信息量的下降导致学校增加了与能力相关的额外信号变量，例如，参加大学先修课程（AP）。虽然在没有操纵的情况下，修过AP课程可能会对能力有帮助，但一旦学生知道大学重视这一点，许多对这些课程不感兴趣的学生可能会选择这些课程来“表明”他们的能力。这降低了信号的信息量，就像考试准备降低了考试的信息量一样。调查的中心焦点是由不知情的学校选择的潜在信号的内生性。理解这种内生性的本质将揭示不同活动对操纵的脆弱性，从而揭示信号活动平衡集随时间的稳定性。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。