Theoretical and Experimental Research on Games of Incomplete Information: Applications to Voting and Bargaining

本项目从理论和实验两方面研究了不完全信息条件下的战略投票和委员会议价机制。关于设计最优投票机制以有效地聚集偏好和信息的一般理论问题，没有明确的侧支付，以及在这种机制下的实际行为，许多问题仍未解决。通过结合理论和实验的观点，所提出的研究将在这两个智力挑战方面取得进展。从理论上讲，存在不同投票机制的相对绩效问题，其中绩效可以相对于几个不同的目标进行评估，包括经济效率、信息效率和公平。本研究从机制设计的角度研究投票行为，比较不同投票机制在不同动态和静态环境下的表现。拟议研究的一部分涉及研究新的投票机制，该机制允许选民在一系列决定中表达偏好强度，希望这些创新能够提供见解，以改善委员会的决策。该项目使用纳什均衡和量子反应均衡对这些环境中的行为进行建模。实验室实验测试了这些行为的一般理论，重点是比较静力学预测和效率特性，并比较了不同机制在特定环境中的性能。这些理论的延伸得到了发展。对数据的分析探索了这些有限理性的扩展模型，以帮助解释理论在哪些地方和为什么似乎是充分的，以及在哪些地方和为什么它遗漏了。从机制设计的角度来看，了解战略投票的行为基础对于预测不同机制下的结果变化是至关重要的。实验方法为这一方向提供了指导。本项目探讨了有限战略复杂性的几种不同规范，以及判断谬误的正式指定模型，例如基本率忽视。(2)更广泛的影响：除了基础研究外，拟议的研究还具有教育成分，通过培养实验经济学和经济理论的研究生。这项研究的最终目标是更好地理解如何修改委员会的程序，以改善决策，克服诸如偏好和信念冲突以及信息不对称等障碍。从长远来看，这种更好的理解可以提高组织和决策机构的绩效。投票程序的绩效是根据传统的经济福利标准、信息效率和公平性来评估的。在这项拨款下，有广泛的软件开发计划。该软件可以被实验经济学的其他研究人员免费使用，并将作为开源代码公开提供。

This project studies strategic voting and committee bargaining mechanisms under conditions of incomplete information from both theoretical and experimental perspectives. Many questions remain unresolved about the general theoretical problem of designing optimal voting mechanisms to efficiently aggregate preferences and information, without explicit side payments, and also about actual behavior under such mechanisms. By combining theoretical and experimental perspectives, the proposed research will make progress with respect to both intellectual challenges. Theoretically, there are questions of the relative performance of different voting mechanisms, where performance can be evaluated relative to several different objectives, including economic efficiency, informational efficiency, and equity.The proposed research approaches voting behavior from a mechanism design perspective, and compares the performance of different voting mechanisms in different kinds of environments, both dynamic and static. Part of the proposed research involves studying new voting mechanisms that allow voters to express preference intensities over a sequence of decisions, in hopes that these innovations can provide insights that will improve committee decision making. This project models behavior in these environments using both Nash equilibrium and quantal response equilibrium. The laboratory experiments test these general theories of behavior, with an emphasis on the comparative statics predictions and the efficiency properties, and compare the performance of different mechanisms in specific environments. Extensions of these theories are developed. The analysis of the data explore these extended models of limited rationality to help explain where and why the theory seems to be adequate and where and why it misses. From the mechanism design perspective, it is critical to understand the behavioral foundations of strategic voting in order to predict how outcomes will change under different mechanisms. The experimental approach provides guidance in this direction. This project explores several different specifications of limited strategic sophistication, and formally specified models of judgement fallacies, such as base-rate neglect. (2) Broader impacts: In addition to basic research, the proposed research has an education component, by training graduate students in experimental economics and economic theory. The ultimate goal of the research is to better understand how procedures in committees can be modified to improve decision making and overcome obstacles such as conflicting preferences and beliefs, and asymmetric information. This better understanding in the long run can improve performance of organizations and policy-making institutions. The performance of voting procedures are evaluated according to traditional economic welfare criteria, informational efficiency, and equity. There is extensive software development proposed under the grant. This software may be used freely by other researchers in experimental economics and will be publicly available as open source code.