Doctoral Dissertation Research in Economics: An Experimental Comparison of Supermodular Lindahl Mechanisms

公共产品经济中的搭便车问题导致了产生有效结果的激励相容制度的理论发展。早期对这类机构的实验工作几乎完全集中在这些机构的稳定性上，发现具有强稳定性的机构更好地实现了他们想要的分配。在这篇博士论文中，格兰特关注经济设计中的另一个重要问题。具体而言，该项目侧重于信息复杂性（以下简称复杂性）在经济制度设计中的作用。 如果一个机构要求人们在做决定时了解更多的信息，那么它就更加复杂。随着经济规模的增长，一些机构变得更加复杂。本研究建议通过比较两个稳定有效机构的绩效来检验信息复杂性，这两个机构在经济增长时的信息需求变化方式不同。 这是第一个实验研究：（一）集中在如何一个机构？（B）比较两种超模块化的林达尔机制;（c）检验货车埃森（2008）提出的制度。它还提供了进一步的证据，激励兼容机制的适用范围，在实现社会理想的成果。更广泛的影响：决策如何影响的制度安排的信息需求的研究是重要的，在经济学和计算机科学的许多领域。本研究提供了这些属性的关键见解，通过实验研究两个不同的机构，其分配目标是相同的，但他们不同的方式，他们的信息需求的变化，为不同规模的经济体。

The free rider problem in public good economies has led to the theoretical development of incentive compatible institutions that yield efficient outcomes. Earlier experimental work on this class of institutions has almost exclusively focused on the stability properties of these institutions finding that institutions with strong stability properties were better at achieving their desired allocation. In this doctoral dissertation grant focuses on another important issue in economic design. Specifically, the project focuses on the role of informational complexity, hereafter complexity, in the design of economic institutions. An institution is more complex if it requires people to know more information when making their decisions. Some institutions become more complex as the economy grows in size. This study proposes to examine information complexity by comparing the performance of two stable efficient institutions that vary in the way their information requirement changes when the economy gets bigger. This is the first experimental study to: (a) focus on how an institution?s information requirement changes with the size of the economy; (b) to compare two supermodular Lindahl mechanisms; (c) to test the institution proposed by Van Essen (2008). It also provides further evidence on the scope of the applicability of incentive compatible mechanisms in the context of achieving socially desirable outcomes.Broader Impact: The study of how decisions are affected by the information requirements of institutional arrangements is important in many areas of economics and computer science. This study provides key insights into these properties by examining experimentally two different institutions whose allocation goal is the same, but they vary in the way their informational requirement changes for different sized economies.