Collaborative Research: Robust Predictions In Games With Private Information

在许多经济环境中，参与者对其处境的相关方面没有相同的信息。例如，在金融市场上，每个投资者可能对某项资产或某家公司的潜在价值有不同的了解。在产品市场中，每个相互竞争的公司可能都有关于其成本结构的私人信息。在拍卖中，比如联邦通信委员会组织的无线频谱拍卖或美国内政部拍卖的近海油田，竞标者对自己的估值有私人信息，对竞争对手的估值也有一些（可能是嘈杂的）信息。代理人的私人信息，无论是他/她自己的估价还是竞争代理人的估价，都会决定代理人的行为和策略。但在实践中，理论和/或实证分析师并不清楚经济主体知道什么，特别是他们对彼此知道什么或不知道什么。从政策角度来看，信息缺失和不完整也是高度相关的，因为许多市场的监管机构都面临着类似的信息限制。pi开发的方法可以预测经济主体的行为以及在这种情况下产生的市场配置。这些预测对于主体的大量私有信息结构是稳健的。它们确定了相互作用和市场性质的条件，在这些条件下，可以对经济行为做出独特的预测。当这些条件不满足时，pi建立了可能经济结果分布的稳健边界，特别是结果的均值和方差。他们利用这些界限来预测市场中信息共享对福利的影响。他们还使用边界来设计健壮的机制，例如拍卖和投票方法，这些机制在许多信息环境中表现良好。该项目提供了一种经济理论，可以为市场和机制设计问题提供实际解决方案。它也为计量经济学未来的工作提供了理论基础，目的是在研究人员不知道市场信息结构的情况下测试模型。这项研究将对使用博弈论作为基本工具的社会科学的许多不同领域产生更广泛的影响。此外，该项目对反垄断政策也有指导意义，因为是否允许卖家共享信息是价格操纵政策的一个问题。

In many economic environments the participants do not have the same informationabout the relevant aspects of their situation. For example, in a financial market eachinvestor may have different pieces of information about the underlying value of an assetor a company. In product markets, each competiting firm may have private informationabout its cost structure. In auctions, such as the wireless spectrum auctions organizedby the Federal Communications Commission or the offshore oil tracts auctioned off bythe U.S. Department of the Interior, the bidders have private information about theirvaluations and also some, possibly noisy, information about the valuations of theircompetitors.The private information of an agent, whether it is about his/her own valuations or thevaluations of the competing agents will determine the behavior and the strategy of theagent. But in practice, the theoretical and/or empirical analysts do not have a clearunderstanding of what the economic agents know and, in particular, what they do or donot know about each other. The missing and incomplete information si also highlyrelevant from a policy perspective as the supervising or regulatory authority in manymarkets face similar informational constraints.The PIs develop methods that allow predictions about the behavior of economic agentsand the reulting market allocations in such settings. These predictions are robust to alarge class of private information structures by the agents. They identify conditions onthe nature of the interaction and the market under which it is possible to make uniquepredictions about economic behavior. When these conditions are not met, the PIsestablish robust bounds on the distribution of possible economic outcomes, especiallythe mean and the variance of the outcomes. They use these bounds to predict thewelfare impact of information sharing in markets. They also use the bounds to designrobust mechanisms, such as auction and voting methods, that perform well in manyinformation environments.This project provides an economic theory that can lead to practical solutions to marketand mechanism design problems. It also provides a theoretical foundation for futurework in econometrics aimed at testing models in situations where the researcher doesnot know the market's information structure.This research will have broader impacts for the many different areas of social sciencethat use game theory as a fundamental tool. In addition, the project has directimplications for antitrust policy, since whether or not to allow sellers to share informationis a question for price-fixing policy.