Collaborative Research: Information and Markets

这个项目分析了信息对市场结构的影响。20世纪20年代，由于技术的发展，互联网和其他市场的信息使用发生了革命性的变化。经济机构正在适应这些变化。与此同时，我们对信息在经济中的作用的理论认识也有了根本性的改进，但这些新的见解有些抽象。我们的项目将信息经济学的最新理论发展应用于经济中的关键经济问题。我们项目的一个组成部分是针对新的数十亿美元的互联网广告市场。广告商购买向特定互联网用户展示广告的权利（向特定互联网用户展示一个广告被称为“印象”）。由于互联网平台拥有用户的详细信息，因此可以精确定位用户，即向具有特定特征的互联网用户展示特定的广告。印象市场已经变得非常复杂。研究团队试图了解与目标印象相关的得失。这项工作将为如何监管互联网平台这一重要政策问题提供参考。该团队对印象市场的研究将分析拍卖理论中的新问题。特别是，在印象市场中，发布者可以利用他关于用户的私人信息来控制广告商关于特定观众价值的信息。提供更多的信息将提高分配效率。但更多的信息也会减少竞争，给买家带来更多的信息租金。该团队计划了解出版商的最佳信息结构，并了解最佳策略如何转化为实际使用的销售方法。该项目的第二个组成部分将研究“竞争市场中的价格歧视”。价格歧视是指企业利用有关消费者的信息，向他们提供不同的价格。价格歧视在垄断销售者的背景下得到了最成功的研究。当企业既相互竞争又存在价格歧视时，分析就会变得棘手。这是一个很好的例子，通过允许更丰富的信息，可以获得更多的洞察力和可追溯性。该团队计划为消费者异质价值的给定分配提供福利结果和价格分配的严格界限。最后，他们想提高我们对信息和“高阶信念”之间关系的理解。高阶信念编码了一个群体对世界的信念，他们对他人信念的信念，等等。通过高阶信念表示信息和通过低结构化表示信息之间的关系是什么？他们将发展这种联系，理解许多玩家对“更多信息”的形式化如何转化为高阶信念，并识别可以使用高阶信念来近似任何信息结构的设置。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 project analyzes the impact of information for the structure of markets. The use of information in internet and other markets has been revolutionized in the twenty by developments in technology. Economic institutions are adapting to these changes. At the same time, there have been fundamental improvements in our theoretical understanding of the role of information in the economy, but these new insights are somewhat abstract. Our project brings recent theoretical developments in information economics to bear on key economic questions in the economy. One component of our project addresses the new multi-billion dollar market for internet advertising. Advertisers purchase the right to display advertisements to particular internet users (the display of one advertisement to a particular internet user is known as an "impression". Because internet platforms have detailed information about users, it is possible to target users precisely, i.e., show particular advertisements to internet users with particular characteristics. The market for impressions has become very sophisticated. The research team seeks to understand the gains and losses associated with targeting impressions. This work will be an input into the important policy question of how internet platforms should be regulated. The team's work on the market for impressions will analyze new questions in auction theory. In particular, in the market for impressions, the publisher can use his private information about users to control advertisers' information about the value of particular viewers. Providing more information will increase the efficiency of the allocation. But more information will also reduce competition and give more information rents to the buyer. The team plans to understand the optimal information structure for the publishers and see how the optimal policy translates into selling methods used in practice. A second component of the project will study "Price Discrimination in Competitive Markets". Price discrimination when firms exploit information about consumers to target them with different prices. Price discrimination has been most successfully studied in the context of a monopoly seller. When firms both compete with each other but also price discriminate, the analysis can become intractable. This is a good example of a setting where more insight and tractability can be gained by allowing richer information. The team plans to provide tight bounds on welfare outcomes and price distributions for a given distribution of heterogeneous values of consumers. Finally, they want to improve our understanding of the relation between information and "higher-order beliefs". Higher-order beliefs encode a population's beliefs about the world, their beliefs about others' beliefs and so on. What is the relation between representing information via higher-order beliefs and less structured representations? They will develop the connection, understanding how a many player formalization of "more information" translates into higher-order beliefs and identifying settings where higher-order beliefs can be used to approximate any information structure.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.