SBE-RCUK Lead Agency: Sequential Bargaining with Externalities

概述：该提案研究了在有交易摩擦的环境中对公共产品和联合项目的顺序贡献。这项拟议的研究包括三个部分。第一个组成部分侧重于委托人的存在，作为完成单一公共物品或集体协议的协调来源。这一组成部分的激励例子包括破产重组、游说/投票购买、具有网络外部性的技术采用和公司收购。研究人员考虑了加强代理人相对于委托人的正式议价能力对结果和福利的影响。第二部分研究在完全分散的环境中(没有委托人)对竞争性公共产品的连续贡献。突出的应用包括向替代性组织捐款，以及在灵活环境中的集体努力，如在开放源码编程中。研究人员在本文中研究了效率、延迟以及任务和团队合作的最优组织。第三部分重新介绍了多联合项目环境下的委托人。这一部分的动人例子是一位国会政党领导人在不同问题上领导该党的议程，一所大学的发展办公室寻求捐款，以及与大捐赠者的捐款。研究人员研究了委托人如何积极管理由多个项目产生的跨期外部性。智力上的优点：这一建议与关于外部性契约、完全信息下谈判模型的延迟以及私人对公共产品的贡献的文献有关。它通过研究对多个项目的贡献以及校长在有摩擦的动态环境中的作用来补充这些工作。为了做到这一点，私人投资机构发展了一系列密切相关的多边谈判模型，在存在外部性的情况下，任务和合同并不是由所有代理人同时承担的。注重按顺序讨价还价突出了以前未曾探索过的搭便车激励措施及其对延误和效率的影响，而多个联合项目的存在则产生了促进项目间协调的新激励措施。这一建议的一个关键步骤是获得一个通用的、易于处理的模型，以揭示在不同设置中对多个公共产品的连续贡献背后的共同力量。提出的模型是灵活的，开发的技术可以被组织、慈善机构等关心激励的未来研究人员使用。中介影响：这项研究涵盖了从筹款和捐赠到团队生产和立法讨价还价的各种应用。这项提案的结果将有助于更好地组织政府和私营部门的这些活动。例如，在筹资方面，该提案将指导如何在有多个小捐助者的情况下以最佳方式捆绑不同的公共事业，以及如何在有大捐助者在场的情况下组织筹资活动。在团队努力方面，它将阐明如何组织多个活跃项目的团队合作。结果也将适用于现代研发公司和开源软件社区的最佳组织。例如，第三部分与监管破产重组的机构的设计特别相关。该项目将由英国和美国的两名研究人员实施。由于这项提议涉及两个不同大洲的不同大学，它将受益于两个不同的机构传播努力，以接触到非学术受众和普通公众。学生还将参与讨论相关文献，探索在不同假设下简化模型的结果，并帮助进行数值计算。

Overview:This proposal studies sequential contributions to public goods and joint projects in environments withtransactional frictions. The proposed research has three components. The first component focuses on thepresence of a principal as a source of coordination for the completion of a single public good or collectiveagreement. Motivating examples for this component include bankruptcy restructuring, lobbying/votebuying, technology adoption with network externalities, and corporate takeovers. The researchersconsider the effect on outcomes and welfare of strengthening agents' formal bargaining power relative tothe principal. The second component studies sequential contributions to competing public goods in a fullydecentralized environment (without a principal). Prominent applications include donations to alternativeorganizations, and collective effort in flexible environments, as in open source programming. Theresearchers study efficiency, delay, and the optimal organization of tasks and teamwork in this context.The third component reintroduces principals in the multiple joint projects environment. Motivatingexamples for this component are a congressional party leader leading the party's agenda over diverseissues, a university's development office seeking contributions, and donations with large donors. Theresearchers study how principals actively manage the intertemporal externalities generated by multipleprojects.Intellectual Merit:This proposal is related to the literature on contracting with externalities, delay in bargaining models withcomplete information, and private contributions to public goods. It complements these works by studyingcontributions to multiple projects and the role of principals in dynamic environments with frictions. To dothis, the PIs develop a family of closely related models of multilateral bargaining in the presence ofexternalities, where tasks and contracting are not undertaken by all agents simultaneously. Focusing onsequential bargaining highlights previously unexplored incentives for free riding and their implicationsfor delay and efficiency, while the existence of multiple joint projects generates new incentives forcoordination across projects. A key step in this proposal is to obtain a general tractable model to uncovercommon forces behind sequential contributions to multiple public goods in different setups. The proposedmodel is flexible, and the techniques developed can be used by future researchers concerned withincentives in organizations, charities, etc.Broader Impacts:This research encompasses a variety of applications, ranging from fundraising and donations, to teamproduction and legislative bargaining. The results from this proposal will help to better organize theseactivities in both government and the private sector. In terms of fundraising, for example, this proposalwill provide guidance about how to optimally bundle different public causes when there are multiplesmall donors and how to organize fundraising in the presence of large donors. In terms of effort in teams,it will shed light on how to organize team cooperation with multiple active projects. Results will also beapplicable to optimal organization for modern R&D companies, and open source software communities.The third component, for example, is particular relevant for the design of the institutions regulatingbankruptcy reorganizations. The project will be carried out by two researchers based in the UK and US.Since this proposal involves two different universities in two different continents, it will benefit from twodifferent institutional dissemination efforts in order to reach non-academic audiences and the generalpublic. Students will also be involved to discuss related literature, explore results of simplified modelsunder alternative assumptions, and aid in numerical computations.