The Economics of Self-Selection

在过去的十年里，无论是在非合作博弈理论方面，还是在应用该理论解释经济现象方面，都取得了非常重大的进展。这项提议的主要目标是在个人拥有不同的信息时，更好地从理论上洞察机构的作用。制度安排的一个重要子类涉及单边竞争。在这样的“竞赛”中，代理人为了某种形式的无形奖励而相互竞争。这可能会采取竞争某些可申请专利的方法、竞标合同或利益集团为追求政治回报而支出的形式。研究的第一部分是关于最后一项活动的更基本模式的发展。其目的是加强我们对政治奖励(如特许经营权或关税壁垒)的价值与代理人愿意为追求这一奖励而花费的资源之间的关系的理解。该项目的第二部分涉及对拍卖理论的扩展，特别是进一步探索了普通密封式高价拍卖和公开升价拍卖的性质。研究的最后部分是对私人信息双边竞争的基本模型进行考察。为了泄露私人信息，个人可以进行代价高昂的信号传递活动。该项目的目标是阐明选择信号的平衡。现在有相当多的研究正式地描述了一种“竞争”均衡，在这种均衡中，产品质量的差异只是因为卖家进行了一些标志着这种差异的活动而被学习到的。然而，当买家必须首先搬家时，一个棘手的理论问题仍然有待解决。

Over the last ten years there have been very significant advances in both the theory of noncooperative games and in the application of the theory to explain economic phenomena. The primary goal of this proposal is to develop better theoretical insights into the role of institutions when individuals have different information. An important subclass of institutional arrangements deal with one.sided competition. In such "contests" agents compete with each other for some form of invisible reward. This may take the form of a race for some patentable process, bidding for a contract or spending by interest groups in the pursuit of a political payoff. The first part of the research is concerned with the development of a more basic model of this last activity. The objective is to enhance our understanding of the relationship between the value of the political prize (such as a franchise or tariff barrier) and the resources that agents are willing to spend in pursuit of this prize. The second part of the project involves extending the theory of auctions, in particular, further exploring the properties of the common sealed high bid and open ascending bid auctions. The final part of the research is to investigate the basic model of two.sided competition with private information. To reveal private information, individuals can undertake costly signalling activity. The goal of the project is to shed light on the equilibrium of choice signals. There is now a considerable body of research formally characterizing a "competitive" equilibrium in which differences in product quality are only learned because sellers undertake some activity which signals such differences. A difficult theoretical problem, however, remains to be resolved when it is that the buyers must move first.