Explorations in the Economics of Choice and Chance

该奖项资助经济理论方面的研究。研究人员计划了四个不同的项目。第一个模型是一个人一个接一个地在可能的选项中搜索。目标是理解当个人已经知道有特定数量的选项并且有一些关于选项的信息时，搜索的最佳方法。这个项目将帮助我们理解在人们通过结构化搜索列表进行搜索之前向他们提供信息的价值。应用包括网络搜索的优化设计和工作/招聘搜索的优化设计。第二个项目建立并分析了医学检测模型，以便在确定的临床检测比信息较少的替代方法更昂贵的情况下确定最佳检测方案。第三个项目将开发一个改进的传染病模型，该模型解释了随着传染病越来越普遍，人类逃避行为日益减缓传染的现象。该模型有助于更准确的流行病学预测。最后一个项目将着眼于风险投资的需求，特别是类似于滚动彩票的投资。我们的目标是更好地理解为什么这些投资正在快速增长，以及如何最好地设计它们。该项目包含四个与选择和机会经济学相关的方法论子项目。第一个研究项目将开发一个在具有有限多个选项和选项先验知识的环境中搜索的顺序模型。这是搜索理论的一个重要创新，因为很少有人在刻板的信息真空中进行搜索。这个项目更倾向于探索在有序列表中进行的搜索，就像在网络搜索环境中提供的那样。最好的回忆发生了，旧的选项更经常被回忆起来。早期的研究为一个长期悬而未决的问题提供了答案：当奖金分配更分散时，人们期望寻找的时间更长。第二个项目将通过随机配对种群博弈来丰富标准流行病学模型，在博弈中个体选择如何谨慎地避免感染。独特的纳什均衡将导致SIR模型的行为扭曲。我们将用2009年H1N1流感大流行的数据来估计这个参数模型，并表明考虑到人类面对持续传染的聪明才智，可以改善对数据的解释。第三个项目将探讨在采取行动之前应如何进行昂贵但信息丰富的医学检查。我们主要的定性推测是由数值模拟驱动的，它将决定何时从低成本医学检测过渡到高成本医学检测，这取决于检测精度或医疗紧迫性。该项目的主要猜想颠覆了2001年一篇著名论文中关于假设连续时间的最佳实验水平的见解。最后一个项目将探讨一个由概率清算的隐性市场。这为彩票赌博提供了一个简单的经济学解释，与轮转彩票揭示的更大的事实一致：人们赌博是因为他们从金钱收益（因人而异）和赌博经历中获得效用。研究结果适用于一系列具有风险回报的投资。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This award funds research in economic theory. The researcher plans four distinct projects. The first models an individual who is searching across possible options one-by-one. The goal is to understand the best way to search when the individual already knows that there is a specified number of options and has some information about options. This project will help us understand the value of providing information to people before they search through structured search lists. Applications include optimal design of web searches and optimal design of job/ hiring searches. The second project builds and analyzes a model of medical testing, to determine optimal testing protocols when definitive clinical tests are more expensive than less informative alternatives. The third project will develop a modified model of contagions that accounts for evasive human behavior that increasingly slows the contagion as it grows more prevalent. The model could contribute to more accurate epidemiological forecasting. The final project will look at demand for risky investments, and in particular investments that are similar to rollover lotteries. The goal is to better understand why these investments are rapidly growing and how best to design them. This project contains four methodologically related sub-projects on the economics of choice and chance. The first research project will develop a sequential model of search in environments with finitely many options and prior knowledge of the options. This is an essential innovation on search theory, since rarely does one search in the stereotypical informational vacuum. This project rather explores search that transpires in smartly ordered lists, as offered in web search contexts. Recall optimally occurs, with older options more often recalled. Early work suggests an answer to a long open question: one expects to search longer when the prize distribution is more disperse. The second project will enrich a standard epidemiological model with a random pairwise matching population game where individuals choose how vigilantly to avoid acquiring it. The unique Nash equilibrium will yield a behavioral twist on the SIR Model. We will estimate this parametric model with data from the 2009 H1N1 influenza pandemic, and show that allowing for human ingenuity facing an ongoing contagion improves the explanation of the data. The third project will explore how should one proceed with costly but informative medical tests before acting. Our main qualitative conjecture, motivated by numerical simulations, will determine when one transitions from low cost to high cost medical testing, depending on the testing precision or medical urgency. The main conjecture of the project upends an insight from a well-known 2001 paper on the optimal level of experimentation that assumed continuous time. The final project will explore an implicit market cleared by probabilities. This proposes a simple economic explanation for lottery gambling that is consistent with the larger set of facts revealed by rollover lotteries: People gamble because they derive utility both from the money gains (varying across people), and the gambling experience. The results are applicable to a range of investments with risky payoffs.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.