Collaborative Research: Dynamic Rational Inattention: Theory and Applications

事实证明，理性忽视模型有助于理解许多经济现象，如价格和投资粘性、消费对收入冲击的不对称反应以及协调失败。本文提出的研究将提供一种新的工具，通过一类新的递归形式的动态理性注意力不集中模型来分析和解释这些问题，以及与经济主体处理信息能力的限制有关的其他问题。这些模型的关键组成部分是无限视界注意约束（IHAC），它捕获了获取信息时的跨期权衡。IHAC规定了今天可以负担得起的信息类型，以及今天学习什么内容的选择如何影响明天和将来可能选择的信息。IHAC在定义良好的意义上是通用的，但它——以及模型的所有其他参数，如依赖于状态的效用和预期的信念对状态的演化——可以从选择行为中唯一地识别出来。首先，提出的研究将公理化地表征可以由模型描述的行为类型。其次，它将开发模型的应用，产生新的理论预测，无论是在个人决策领域还是在战略互动的背景下，以及在不同的领域，从宏观经济现象到心理学家和经济学家在实验室实验中收集的证据的解释。例如，该模型可以捕获诸如获取信息的专业知识和疲劳等概念，并产生诸如熟悉偏差等新的行为现象。它还将产生关于政策的新见解，这些政策可能会改善低效的注意力选择。当前关于注意力枯竭似乎在使人们陷入贫困中所起作用的辩论强调了这一问题的相关性（见Mani et. al. 2013和Mullainathan and Shafir， 2013）。

Models of rational inattention have proved to be useful in understanding many economic phenomena, such as price and investment stickiness, asymmetric response of consumption to income shocks, and coordination failure. The proposed research will provide a new tool to analyze and interpret these - as well as other issues that pertain to economic agents' limitations on the ability to process information - via a new class of dynamic rational inattention models that have a recursive form. The key component in these models is an Infinite Horizon Attention Constraint (IHAC), which captures the intertemporal trade-off in acquiring information. An IHAC specifies what type of information is affordable today, and how the choice of what to learn today affects the possible choices of information tomorrow and in the future. The IHAC is universal in a well-defined sense and yet it - as well as all the other parameters of the model, such as state dependent utilities and the anticipated evolution of beliefs over states - can be uniquely identified from choice behavior.First, the proposed research will characterize axiomatically the types of behavior that can be described by the model. Second, it will develop applications of the model that generate new theoretical predictions, both in the realm of individual decision making and in the context of strategic interactions, and in different areas, ranging from macro-economic phenomena to the explanation of evidence collected by psychologists and economists in laboratory experiments. For example, the model can capture notions such as expertise and fatigue in acquiring information and gives rise to new behavioral phenomena such as familiarity bias. It will also generate new insights about policies that might ameliorate inefficient attention choices. The relevance of this issue is underscored by the current debate about the role exhausted attention seems to play in trapping people in poverty (see Mani et. al. 2013 and Mullainathan and Shafir, 2013).