Economic Engineering of Trust

大多数经济工程处理集中的系统（例如，拍卖和匹配市场）。然而，本研究项目的重点是分散市场的设计。好的设计鼓励披露有效交易所必需的私人信息，也促进自愿合作和信任。除了物质激励外，这些设计还需要考虑社会动机和有限的认知。更具体地说，我们关注的是产生道德风险和逆向选择问题的信息缺陷。因此，信任和可信赖性对市场有效运作至关重要。除此之外，通过利用理论、实地数据和实验室实验，我们在第一个资助期展示了为什么建议（包括声誉信息）在金融和互联网市场中被扭曲，以及如何设计机构来减轻这种扭曲并促进信任。基于我们之前的发现，我们计划扩展我们在A部分的研究，不仅假设一个知情的顾问（卖方），而且还假设一个知情的被顾问（买方）。例如，我们计划利用家庭调查来探索建议和（错误）明智的财务决策之间的相互作用。我们还计划研究建议者面对知情被建议者的行为，其结果将对政策产生影响，该政策旨在使消费者更容易获得信息并允许消费者验证建议。我们在A部分的实验室研究将包括通过昂贵的努力对信息内生生成的调查。同样，在B部分中，虽然一个重点将继续是在大型市场中设计声誉系统以揭示有用的信息（利用来自eBay的数据集），但我们将补充研究冲突解决系统和谈判程序，以促进信任与合作。鉴于我们的研究揭示了反馈系统的重大困难，这种补充措施在实践中越来越多地被使用也许并不奇怪——尽管迄今为止，人们对它们的表现和与有限理性交易的相互作用知之甚少。特别是，谈判发生在市场交易互动的几乎所有步骤中，因此在工程信任方面具有决定性作用。然而，经济标准理论并没有提供一个令人满意的谈判画面在现实世界的背景下，特别是当环境特定的不对称和多个焦点困扰。我们的目标是帮助填补这些文献上的空白。

Most economic engineering deals with centralized systems (e.g., auction and matching markets). The focus of the present research project, however, is the design of decentralized markets. Good designs encourage the revelation of private information necessary to efficient trading, and also promote voluntary cooperation and trust. Along with material incentives, these designs need also take into account social motivations and limited cognition. More specifically, we focus on informational deficits that create moral hazard and adverse selection problems. Thus, trust and trustworthiness are crucial for the market to function effectively. Among other things, by utilizing theory, field data and laboratory experiments, we have shown in the first funding period why advice (including reputation information) is distorted in financial and Internet markets, and how institutions can be engineered to mitigate such distortions and to promote trust. Based on our previous findings, we plan to extend our research in Part A by not only assuming an informed advisor (seller) but also an informed advisee (buyer). For instance, we plan to utilize a household survey to explore interactions of advice and (mis)informed financial decisions. We also plan to study advisor behavior facing informed advisees, the results of which will have repercussions for policy that intends both to make consumers’ access to information easier and to allow consumers to validate recommendations. Our laboratory studies in Part A will include an investigation of the endogenous generation of information through a costly effort. Similarly, in Part B, while one focus will continue to be the design of reputation systems in large markets to reveal useful information (utilizing a data set from eBay), we will complementarily investigate conflict resolution systems and negotiation procedures to promote trust and cooperation. Given that our research revealed significant difficulties with feedback systems, it is perhaps not surprising that such complementary measures are increasingly used in practice − although their performance and interaction with boundedly rational trading is, so far, poorly understood. In particular, negotiations take place on almost all steps of interaction in market transactions, and are thus decisive when it comes to engineering trust. However, economic standard theory does not deliver a satisfactory picture of negotiations in real-world contexts, in particular, when plagued by context-specific asymmetries and multiple focal points. We aim to help filling these gaps in the literature.