ICES: SMALL: Mechanism Design with Information-Sensitive Agents

机制设计研究的是当参与互动的代理人都是自利的时候，如何设计互动，以产生社会、政治和经济上理想的结果。虽然代理人的利益通常是通过对金钱和消费品等物质结果的偏好来捕获的，但这往往不足以实现现实世界的互动。例如，今天的许多社会和经济互动都发生在网上，互动记录被存档、维护，并经常传播给其他人。在这样的互动中，代理人的动机不仅是由最终的物质结果，但也可能是由关注他们的私人信息是什么和多少在互动过程中透露。例如，当他们的私人信息被披露时，代理可能更喜欢一个结果而不是另一个结果，但如果没有信息被披露，则可能更喜欢后者而不是前者。他们可能重视隐私，并希望防止他们的私人信息泄露。或者，他们可能希望合理地披露他们的私人信息，作为向他人发出的信号。这个项目开发了一个模型的信息敏感的代理，捕捉这些类型的喜好，并探讨了问题的设计ineractions等agents.Some的问题，在这个项目中解决的是：做的机制，存在于当前的理论文献和实践中仍然“工作”时，代理有信息敏感的喜好？是否有可能设计出对代理人的各种信息敏感程度都很强大的机制？是否存在具有其他可取性质的机制，例如保护隐私或可信地披露信息？该项目的广泛影响是双重的。首先，对信息敏感的一种普遍形式是对隐私的偏爱，这是电子商务中争论最多的问题之一。由于该项目研究隐私的战略意义，它有可能为这场激烈的辩论提供有价值的见解。第二，当代理人参与许多机制时，信息敏感性特别重要，在这种情况下，信息从一个机制泄漏到另一个机制成为一个关键的考虑因素。通过明确包括对信息泄漏的关注，该项目促进了更强大和更模块化的经济机制的设计和分析。

Mechanism design studies the problem of designing interactions that yield socially, politically, and economically desirable outcomes when the agents participating in the interaction are self-interested. While agents' interests are typically captured by preferences over material outcomes such as money and consumption goods, this is often insufficient for real-world interactions. For example, many of today's social and economic interactions take place online, and records of the interactions are archived, maintained, and often spread to others. In such interactions agents are motivated not only by the resulting material outcomes, but possibly also by concerns about what and how much of their private information is revealed in the course of the interaction. Agents may, for example, prefer one outcome to another when their private information is revealed, but may prefer the latter outcome to the former if no information is revealed. They may value privacy, and wish to prevent the leakage of their private information. Alternatively, they may wish to credibly disclose their private information as a signal to others. This project develops a model of information-sensitive agents that captures these kinds of preferences, and examines the problem of designing ineractions for such agents.Some of the questions addressed in this project are: Do the mechanisms that exist in the current theoretical literature and in practice still "work" when agents have information-sensitive preferences? Is it possible to design mechanisms that are robust to various levels of information-sensitivity of the agents? Are there mechanisms that have additional desirable properties, such as the preservation of privacy or the credible disclosure of information?The broader impacts of this project are twofold. First, a prevalent form of information-sensitivity is a predilection for privacy, one of the most debated issues in electronic commerce. Since this project examines the strategic implications of privacy, it has the potential to contribute valuable insights to this heated debate. Second, information-sensitivity is particularly relevant when agents participate in numerous mechanisms, in which case the leakage of information from one mechanism to another becomes a critical consideration. By explicitly including concerns for information leakage, this project facilitates the design and analysis of economic mechanisms that are both more robust and more modular.