Studies in Games and Incentives

这个雄心勃勃的项目扩展了博弈论，并将博弈论应用到耐用品垄断和所得税审计的研究中。更具体地说，该项目通过为玩家添加一个策略，允许该玩家确定获得原始游戏的均衡值，来检查博弈论均衡，这些均衡是从原始游戏派生的博弈中可合理化的策略。早期的工作表明，这些均衡可以用来统一信号博弈的不同工作。这个项目的目标是将结果扩展到更一般的游戏。刻画了具有新消费者进入的动态垄断模型。这个模型似乎有静态均衡和非稳态均衡，在静态均衡中，随着报价之间的时间缩短，卖家失去了价格歧视的能力，而在非静态均衡中，卖家保持了一定的垄断力。该项目开发了一个税收设定和执行的三级模型。政府制定税率，对不遵守规定的行为进行处罚，并为审计师制定预算。审计师决定审计哪些报告。纳税人决定要上报多少收入。该项目的特点是线性税收和审计预算，使社会福利函数最大化。由此得到的特征被用来找出在什么情况下审计师预算不足是最好的。这一激动人心的项目为博弈论、产业组织和公共财政做出了重要贡献。博弈论的研究发展和推广了一种新的方法，通过在原始博弈中添加具有固定结果的策略来检验从博弈中获得的结果的稳健性。产业组织的工作已经获得了令人惊讶的证据，证明价格歧视持续存在，这对政府政策有影响。延期应该会提高我们对耐用商品垄断者通过定期销售进行价格歧视的能力的理解。第三部分发现了中等收入纳税人被美国国税局过度审计的证据。用于该项目这一部分的所得税审计的分层模式应该会为公共财政提供其他新的见解。

This ambitious project extends game theory and applies game theory to the study of durable goods monopoly and income tax auditing. More specifically, the project examines game theoretic equilibria that are rationalizable strategies in a game derived from the original game by adding a strategy for a player which allows that player to get the equilibrium value of the original game for sure. Earlier work has shown that these equilibria can be used to unify different work on signalling games. The goal of this project is to extend the results to more general games. A model of dynamic monopoly with entry of new consumers is characterized. This model seems to have stationary equilibria in which the seller loses the ability to price discriminate as the time between offers shrinks, and nonstationary equilibria in which the seller maintains some monopoly power. The project develops a three-level model of tax setting and enforcement. The government sets tax rates, penalties for noncompliance, and a budget for the auditor. The auditor determines which reports to audit. Taxpayers determine how much income to report. The project characterizes the linear tax and auditing budget that maximizes a social welfare function. The resulting characterization is used to find conditions under which it is optimal for the auditor to be under budgeted. This exciting project makes important contributions to game theory, industrial organization and public finance. The research in game theory develops and generalizes a new way of examining the robustness of the results obtained from games by adding strategies with fixed outcomes to the original game. The work in industrial organization has already obtained surprising evidence of the persistence of price discrimination that has implications for government policy. The extensions should improve our understanding of the ability of durable good monopolists to price discriminate via periodic sales. The third part finds evidence that the middle-income taxpayers are over-audited by the IRS. The hierarchical model of income tax auditing used for this part of the project should provide other novel insights in public finance.