CAREER: Behavioral Mechanism Design

该奖项由2009年美国复苏和再投资法案(公法111-5)资助。经济学领域称为机制设计，研究如何设计达到预期结果的激励方案。它有许多应用，代表着过去30年来经济理论最重要的发展之一；事实上，这一理论最近获得了诺贝尔奖。与此同时，行为经济学和决策科学的最新研究加强了我们对人们在战略环境中实际行为的理解。这个职业项目的重点是基于这一新的行为知识发现更好的机制。该研究计划包括实验室实验和理论工作，以发现一般行为原则，为拍卖和碳交易系统等特定应用领域确定更好的机制，并为广泛应用的最佳机制设计提供洞察。PI正在为来自广泛社会经济背景的高中生创建一个新的夏季研讨会。这些学生参加使用经济学实验的实践研究研讨会。这项计划特别针对代表性不足群体的成员，该计划激发了人们在社会科学领域追求职业生涯的兴趣。PI还将设计和教授一门新的本科课程，即机械设计的行为经济学。这门课将包括一个？顶石？学生设计和进行自己的实验的组件。最后，他将重组现有的博士课程，并为经济学和相关学科(包括决策科学)的研究生和教职员工开设一个行为机制设计阅读小组。该奖项资助的研究提供了进一步的社会效益，因为它将用于开发下一代激励机制。

This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009(Public Law 111-5).The field of economics known as mechanism design considers how to design incentive schemes that reach desired outcomes. It has many applications and it represents one of the most important developments in economic theory over the past 30 years; indeed, this theory resulted in a recent Nobel Prize. At the same time, recent research in behavioral economics and decision science has strengthened our understanding of how people actually behave in strategic settings. This CAREER project focuses on discovering superior mechanisms based on this new behavioral knowledge. The research plan includes both laboratory experiments and theoretical work to discover general behavioral principles, identify better mechanisms for specific areas of application such as auctions and carbon-trading systems, and to provide insight into the design of optimal mechanisms for a wide range of general applications.The PI is creating a new summer workshop for high school students from a wide range of socioeconomic backgrounds. These students participate in hands-on research workshops using economics experiments. Members of under-represented groups are particularly targeted by this program, which creates interest in pursuing a career in social science. The PI will also design and teach a new undergraduate course in behavioral economics of mechanism design. The class will include a ?capstone? component where students design and carry out their own experiment. Finally, he will restructure an existing doctoral course and start a reading group in behavioral mechanism design for graduate students and faculty in Economics and related disciplines, including decision science. The research funded by this award provides further societal benefit because it will be used to develop the next generation of incentive mechanisms.