Topics in Dynamics, Competition, Contracts, and Voting

这个项目有几个不同的部分。每个组成部分都解决了一个重要经济学领域的基本问题。在第一部分，我们提出了一个博弈论的解决概念，称为马尔可夫均衡。经济学家使用动态博弈来预测经济参与者如何随着时间的推移进行战略互动。马尔可夫均衡是在这些动态博弈中做出更准确预测的工具。我们将马尔可夫均衡的概念扩展到包括agent的行为不能被观察到的情况，以及agent通过实验学习的情况。我们使用这些工具来检查动态不平等和隔离。在第二部分，我们提出了对拍卖效率的考察。拍卖是在买家之间分配商品的常用机制。我们计划调查哪种拍卖能最好地确保复杂物品最终到达最看重它们的买家手中。第三，我们计划研究预见或指定未来或有事件的困难可能在多大程度上干扰两个经济当事方之间的合同谈判。在我们的模型中，我们解决了一个困难的问题，即代理人不能使合同取决于每一种自然状态，但可以使合同取决于未来的收益。最后，我们建议调查哪些投票规则（例如，多数决定原则或多数决定原则）在尽可能广泛的情况下工作“良好”（满足某些标准要求）的意义上是稳健的。

The project has several distinct parts. Each component addresses a fundamental problem in an important area of economics. In the first part, we propose a game-theoretic solution concept called a Markov equilibrium. Economists use dynamic games to make predictions about how economic actors interact strategically over time. Markov equilibrium is a tool for making sharper predictions in these dynamic games. We extend the notion of a Markov equilibrium to include situations in which actions of agents cannot be observed, and situations in which agents learn by experimentation. We use these tools to examine dynamic inequality and segregation. In the second part we propose to examine the efficiency of auctions. Auctions are a commonly-used mechanist for allocating goods across buyers. We plan to investigate which auctions do the best job of ensuring that the complex goods end up in the hands of the buyers who value them the most. Third, we plan to study the extent to which the difficulty of foreseeing or specifying future contingencies may interfere with contract negotiations between two economic parties. In our model, we address the difficult problem of agents who cannot make contracts contingent on every state of nature, but can make contracts contingent on future payoffs. Finally, we propose to investigate which voting rules (e.g., majority rule or plurality rule) are robust in the sense that they work `well` (satisfy certain standard desiderata) in as wide set of circumstances as possible.