武汉大学经济与管理学院，经济学高级研究论坛 [信息]

2023

• December 29, 2023, Friday
  • Speaker: 周恕弘 西南财经大学
  • Title: Axiomatizing Correlation Utility
  • Time: 10:00
  • Venue: 经管院216
  • Chair:
  • Abstract: 在遗憾和显著的相关偏好文献的基础上，我们提出了一种不要求传递性或完备性的相关效用公理化。接下来，我们通过采用相关偏好的独立性公理，将相关预期效用（CEU）公理化。通过将独立性弱化为中间性，我们将非CEU偏好公理化。由此产生的相关中间效用（CBU）可以解释最近的相关偏好实验证据，包括与CEU不兼容的相关阿菜悖论。我们进一步研究了（不）完备性对CEU和CBU的影响。在没有相关敏感性的情况下，CEU简化为可传递的期望效用，而CBU则简化为一种独立性弱化（称为投影独立性）下的反对称双线性表示，并进一步简化为传递性下的权重效用。
  • 周恕弘，教授，西南财经大学中国行为经济与行为金融研究中心特聘主任。计量经济学会院士、经济学理论促进学会（SAET）院士（Fellow）、实验与行为经济学家。1976年本科就读于美国哈维姆德学院的物理学专业，同时获得英国伦敦大学的数学专业学士学位，并获得英国伦敦城市行业协会颁发的电信全面技术证书（Full Technological Certificate in Telecommunications）。1977年获得加州克雷蒙研究院的数学硕土学位，1981年获得加拿大不列颠哥伦比亚大学跨学科研究（数学、经济学、管理科学）的博士学位。担任的课程包括决策理论、微观经济学理论、行为与实验经济学，其研究领域为决策理论、行为与生物经济学、实验经济学，曾执任香港科技大学实验商业研究中心主任，曾执教于美国亚利菜那大学、约翰霍普金斯大学、加州大学尔湾分校、香港科技大学，在经济学顶级期刊发表多篇文章，其第一篇论文就发表在Econometrica，且为独立作者。近年来，他开始研究脑神经经济学和基因对于人类经济行为的影响，论文发表在多本国际科学期刊上。截至目前，其在经济学以及其他学科权威期刊上共发表学术论文75篇。
• December 21, 2023, Thursday
  • Speaker: 皇甫秉超，南京审计大学
  • Title: Matching and Price Competition in Large Markets
  • Time: 10:00
  • Venue: 经管院233
  • Chair:
  • Abstract: This paper studies the large market implications of impersonal wage competition. In a setting in which there are finitely many categories of firms and workers, firms compete for workers by offering wages, we characterize the unique bidding equilibrium when the market size is large. We show that competition is local: firms only compete against others like themselves, either within the same category or one category above, which coincides with the binding incentive constraints in the corresponding VCG outcome. We also characterize the rate of convergence of the equilibrium to the firm-optimal competitive equilibrium. In particular, it shows that wage suppression, which can be an issue when the market size is small, quickly disappears when the numbers of firms and workers in each category increases.
  • 皇甫秉超，美国罗切斯特大学经济学博士，南京审计大学助理教授，主要从事信息经济学与微观经济理论研究，论文发表于AEJ-Micro、IJGT、金融研究等国内外期刊。
• December 7, 2023, Thursday
  • Speaker: 帅杰 中南财经政法大学文澜学院
  • Title: 流量撬动质量——基于数字经济下内容市场的研究
  • Time: 10:00
  • Venue: 学院235
  • Chair:
  • Abstract: 质量是数字时代内容市场的重中之重。然而，数字经济下内容市场历经野蛮生长时期，低劣乃至不良内容层出不穷。本文系统研究流量对内容质量的影响机制，探讨内容市场化量为质的规制思路。本文发现，相较于传统经济下内容市场，数字经济带来扩容效应与挤占效应，自由转载能够提升流量但不一定降低质量。当扩容效应占优时，市场能够实现流量与质量的兼得；但当挤占效应占优时，流量的提升导致质量的下降。进一步地，加强市场准入与知识产权监管力度能够有效改善质量。与自由转载相比，付费转载的治理方式与严格的市场准入政策同时实施才总能提升质量与各方福利。因此，必须充分发挥市场准入政策与知识产权保护政策的关键作用，推动内容市场的多方共赢与健康发展。
  • 帅杰，中南财经政法大学文澜学院教授，副院长，主要研究领域产业组织理论，数字经济。多篇文章发表在Marketing Science，Game and Economic Behavior, Journal of Industrial Economics, International Journal of Industrial Organization等国际一流期刊，主持国家自然科学基金青年和面上项目各一项。
• November 27, 2023, Monday
  • Speaker: 崔志伟 中国人民大学经济学院
  • Title: Link complementarity and social coordination
  • Time: 10:00
  • Venue: 经管院210
  • Chair:
  • Abstract: We consider a model of social coordination and network formation where agents decide on an action in a coordination game and on whom to form costly links to. We explore the role of link complementarity; that is, active and passive connections are strategic complements, where for a given agent, active connections are links formed by herself, and passive connections are links that other agents form to her. With link complementarity, agents have to deal with both the issue of link coordination and the issue of action coordination. When agents are constrained in the number of links they form, Nash equilibria, including both action-homogenous and action-heterogenous strategy profiles, are characterized by reciprocal sub-networks where an agent forms links with agents who form a link with her. Depending on the precise parameters of the model, risk-dominant or payoff-dominant strategy profiles are stochastically stable. More interestingly, the resulting networks are strongly reciprocal: for almost every agent, the set of agents to whom she forms a link coincides with the set of agents who form a link with her. The notion of strong reciprocity substantially refines the set of reciprocal networks, and offers a prediction for interaction structures.
  • 崔志伟，中国人民大学经济学院副教授。主要研究领域及兴趣为网络博弈理论及应用、博弈学习理论及应用等。主持多项国家自然科学基金项目，研究成果发表于Journal of Economic Theory、Games and Economic Behavior、Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization、Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control、Journal of Mathematical Economics等国际经济学权威期刊，以及《管理评论》、《运筹与管理》等管理类CSSCI权威期刊。
• November 23, 2023, Thursday
  • Speaker: 杨仁琨 暨南大学经济学院 助理教授
  • Title: 网络结构中信息的出售
  • Time: 14:00
  • Venue: 学院358
  • Chair:
  • Abstract: 一个数据中介出售消费者的社交网络信息，包括其影响力（入度）和/或易受影响的程度（出度），给一个网络产品的垄断者。然后，垄断者根据购买的数据向消费者收取个性化价格。当中介只销售一个维度而垄断者可以选择收购策略时，数据需求是针对最有影响力和/或最不易受影响的消费者。中介的最佳数据定价在平衡中引起了部分定向，导致效率损失。如果垄断者被限制为随机抽样，最佳数据定价将导致对消费者名单的完全收购，最大化平台的利润、消费者剩余和总体福利，同时充分提取公司的额外利润。
  • 杨仁琨，暨南大学经济学院助理教授，博士毕业于俄亥俄州立大学经济系。研究领域为信息设计、机制设计与产业组织理论。主持国家自然科学青年基金一项。
• November 16, 2023, Thursday
  • Speaker: 黄大康 西南财经大学中国行为经济与行为金融研究中心 助理教授
  • Title: Market Structure and Adverse Selection
  • Time: 10:00
  • Venue: 学院233
  • Chair:
  • Abstract: This paper adopts a unified perspective on multi-contracting in competitive markets plagued by adverse selection. We subsume the two polar cases of exclusive and nonexclusive competition by introducing the concept of a market structure, i.e., a trading rule that specifies the subset of sellers with whom buyers can jointly trade. The existing literature shows that the market structure matters greatly in shaping competitive allocations, allowing for either separating allocations (as shown by Rothschild-Stiglitz) or layered pooling (Jaynes-Hellwig-Glosten) allocations. We prove the existence of intermediate “Pooling + Separating” equilibria that allow for simultaneous pooling and low-risk buyer separation. Crucially, those allocations alleviate at the same time the concern of excessive rationing under separation of and cross-subsidies paid by low-risk buyers. They oftentimes Pareto dominate the Rothschild-Stiglitz separating allocation. Our analysis singles out the “1+1″ market structure where sellers are separated into two subgroups so that buyers can trade with at most one seller from each subgroup. Any “Pooling + Separating” allocation is an equilibrium here. Finally, we prove that “Pooling + Separating” allocations satisfy a notion of stability that we call serendipitous-aftermarket-proofness.
  • 黄大康，2023年获得图卢兹经济学院经济学博士学位，现为西南财经大学经济学院中国行为经济和行为研究中心助理教授，主要研究领域为契约理论，信息经济学，机制设计等。个人主页：https://www.dakang-huang.com/
• September 8, 2023, Friday
  • Speaker: 梁平汉 中山大学政治与公共管理学院 教授
  • Title: “靠路吃路”：财政压力与交通视频监控设备采购
  • Time: 14:00
  • Venue: 经管院B221
  • Chair:
  • Abstract: 本文基于“中国政府采购网”超440万政府采购公告信息，本研究利用半监督深度学习算法收集并整理了2014-2019年的交通视频监控设备采购公告数据，考察地方财政压力对于交通监控安装的影响。以2016年全面“营改增”政策为切入点，利用双重差分以及三重差分模型，解释地方政府交通监控安装行为的组织逻辑。研究发现，首先，双重差分的结果与以往相关文献结论一致，当面临财政压力时，在全国平均意义上，地方政府会显著的减少交通监控设备的投入。其次，在三重差分的结果中，发现地方政府对交通监控的使用存在显著的“靠路吃路”效应。具体而言，在交通干线资源丰富的地方，当地方政府面对巨大财政压力时，会显著增加交通监控的安装。该效应在市场制度环境较差、财政透明度较低和官员晋升动机强烈的地方更为明显。进一步分析表明，交通监控投入显著增加了地方罚没收入，也导致民众对于交通罚款的相关投诉增加，并减少了市场新注册企业数量。本文从交通监控安装这一新视角研究了财政压力下的地方政府行为，并分析其潜在的政治与经济影响，有助于理解和治理“逐利执法”现象，进一步优化营商环境。
  • 梁平汉，中山大学政治与公共管理学院教授、博士生导师，中山大学“逸仙学者”，牛津大学“太古”高级访问学者。《产业经济评论》执行副主编，中国数量经济学会理事，中国运筹学会博弈论分会理事。主要研究地方政府行为、行为与实验经济学、博弈论、政商关系等。在Economic Journal, Games and Economic Behavior，《经济研究》《管理世界》《经济学（季刊）》等国内外一流期刊发表论文数十篇，主持国家社科基金、国家自科基金资助项目多项，研究成果被《新华文摘》和人大复印报刊资料全文转载多次，获霍英东基金会优秀青年教师奖，教育部、四川省、重庆市等部省级奖励多项。
• June 26, 2023, Monday
  • Speaker: 高明 清华大学经济管理学院 助理教授
  • Title: 数据治理与信息设计
  • Time: 10:00
  • Venue: 经管院B224
  • Chair:
  • Abstract: 本文从数据包含的需求信息出发，运用信息设计的理论方法，为数据价值的创造、度量与分配问题提供一个新的分析框架。我们的研究显示，适当运用信息设计的方法，既可以充分发挥数据价值，又能实现数据价值的合理分配。我们指出数据创造价值的几种具体途径，揭示信息设计通过哪些机制改善数据价值的分配。我们也在多种不同的情况下讨论由政府、企业或者其他主体承担信息设计者职责的合理性，为相关的数据治理问题提出政策建议。
  • 高明，清华大学经济管理学院助理教授、博士生导师、经济与金融专业本科生班主任。英国伦敦商学院经济学博士，清华大学数量经济学硕士、经济学学士、优良毕业生。 主要研究领域为产业组织理论、平台经济学、数字经济、双边市场、行为产业组织、反垄断与竞争政策等。近期研究成果发表在International Economic Review等国际顶尖经济学期刊。曾经以及正在主持多项国家自然科学基金、教育部人文社会科学研究及清华大学自主科研项目。教育部国家级一流本科课程《产业组织理论》主讲人，清华大学经济管理学院教学优秀教师（四次获奖)、经济系优秀教师。主讲的清华-MIT Global MBA项目核心课程《管理经济学（英文）》获清华大学研究生精品课程。 2022-2023年国务院发展研究中心访问学者，2018年牛津大学Nuffield学院访问学者，伦敦商学院访问学者。曾任清华大学经济学硕士项目学术主任（2010-2013）、伦敦商学院研讨会教师（2008-2009）。
• June 26, 2023, Monday
  • Speaker: LEE, JONG JAE 韩国天主教大学 讲师
  • Title: Multipurchasing with Complementarity and Full Market Covering
  • Time: 09:00
  • Venue: 经管院C366
  • Chair:
  • Abstract: This paper studies implications of complementarity and full market covering property on the existence of multi-purchase equilibrium in the variant of the Hotelling model that allows for an outside option of“no purchase”and a multi-purchasing option of buying both products from different firms. We show that when goods are complements, a multi-purchase equilibrium is a unique equilibrium in which every consumer buys at least one product. Particularly, we show that the set of prices supporting full market covering implies multi-purchasing however large is the value of product for consumers. This provides a cautionary warning to an understanding that full market covering assumption is innocuous because market can be made fully covered if the value of product is sufficiently large.
  • Lee Jong Jae is a lecturer at The Catholic University of Korea. He got his Ph.D.in Economics from Johns Hopkins University and worked asan Assistant Professor at the Economics and Management School of Wuhan University from 2018 to 2022. His research areas include mathematical economics, bargaining, applied IO theory, etc., and published scientific outputs in several international academic journals such as Economic Theory, Journal of Economic Theory, Mathematical Social Sciences.
• June 16, 2023, Friday
  • Speaker: 杨明 (UCL)
  • Title:
  • Time: 0930
  • Venue:
  • Chair:
  • Abstract:
• June 9, 2023, Friday
  • Speaker: 张木 密歇根大学
  • Title: Procedural Expected Utility
  • Time: 14:00
  • Venue: 经管院C366
  • Chair:
  • Abstract: This paper studies procedures a decision maker adopts to evaluate two-dimensional risk. She might either follow the standard expected utility model and treat risk in different dimensions as a whole, or apply simplification heuristics to evaluate risk in different dimensions in isolation or sequentially. We axiomatize those procedures by maintaining the Independence axiom within each dimension and relaxing it across dimensions. Through applications in different choice domains, we demonstrate that our procedures can (i) explain experimental evidence of violations of stochastic dominance without inducing such violations in the absence of risk, (ii) separate time and risk preferences without assuming a preference for early resolution of uncertainty, and (iii) accommodate risk aversion over time lotteries without violating stochastic impatience.
  • 张木，密歇根大学，经济学助理教授。本科于2016年毕业于清华大学，并于2022年获得普林斯顿大学经济学博士学位。研究领域为微观经济理论，聚焦于决策理论和行为经济学。曾在经济学国际期刊上发表论文数篇，其中包括Journal of Economic Theory和Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization。
• June 2, 2023, Friday
  • Speaker: 柯荣住 浙江大学经济学院 教授
  • Title: Hiring Managers(官员遴选中的激励：基于明代科举的数据挖掘)
  • Time: 15:30
  • Venue: 经管院B444
  • Chair:
  • Abstract: Two fundamental problems plague hiring for important positions: to design incentive schemes for hiring managers and to measure their performance in hiring. We develop a theoretical model to capture the hiring managers’strategic discretion in hiring. Their private incentives induce them to increase screening efforts, which benefits both themselves and paradoxically the principal by generating the least distorted sorting outcomes. We substantiate this model using a historical dataset of 12,752 candidates who passed 46 civil service examinations (CSEs) in China between 1400 and 1580. Results show that examiners’motivation was positively correlated with the quality of the cohort being hired.
  • 柯荣住，麻省理工学院经济学博士，现任职于浙江大学经济学院，浙江大学“文科领军人才”特聘教授，博士生导师，浙江省特聘专家。研究领域为微观经济学、契约理论及组织经济学。在Journal of Labor Economics, Operations Research, Theoretical Economics，Management Science, SIAM Journal on Optimization，Economic Theory等国际权威经济管理专业杂志上等发表论文多篇。也曾在《中国社会科学季刊》(香港)、《中国社会科学》、《经济研究》、《经济学季刊》、《社会学研究》等各类中文杂志上发表20多篇学术论文和研究报告。曾主持国家自然科学基金重点课题（重大项目子课题）、香港政府研究局RGC项目、浙江省哲学社会科学重大课题等各类项目10多项；曾参与国家自然科学基金项目、杰出青年科学基金项目，教育部重点课题，浙江省社会科学重大课题，国家体改办体改研究会等研究项目10多项。
• June 1, 2023, Thursday
  • Speaker: 张堃 亚利桑那州立大学
  • Title: Uncharted Waters: Selling a New Product Robustly
  • Time: 14:00
  • Venue: 经管院C366
  • Chair:
  • Abstract: A seller introduces a novel product to an unfamiliar market. The seller sets a price and chooses how much information to provide about the product to a representative buyer, who may incur a search cost to discover an outside option. The buyer knows her outside option distribution, but the seller knows only its mean and an upper bound on its support, and evaluates any selling strategy by its guaranteed profit. The robustly optimal strategy balances the trade-off between demand and surplus extraction: information design can boost demand by deterring the buyer’s search, but this may require providing her with a high payoff via a low price. I find that full information is optimal only when the search cost is high, and different kinds of partial information provision policies are optimal for lower search costs. Perhaps surprisingly, the price is not monotone in the search cost. These results shed light on the large variations in information provision policies among new products, and suggest that technological advancements that reduce search costs may increase prices and make information provision noisier.
  • 张堃，亚利桑那州立大学博士，2024年1月将加入澳大利亚昆士兰大学任讲师。主要研究信息经济学及其在产业组织理论和合约理论中的应用。
• May 25, 2023, Thursday
  • Speaker: 张旭 香港科技大学（广州）
  • Title: 非贝叶斯劝说
  • Time: 15:00
  • Venue: 经管院A204
  • Chair:
  • Abstract: 本次讲座报告的工作将信息设计中的贝叶斯劝说模型（Kamenica and Gentzkow, 2011）推广到信息接收者可能为非贝叶斯理性人的情境,研究非理性概率推断如何影响最优劝说的设计。我们发现当接收者的概率推断符合一大类信念更新法则时，经典的“凹化”方法仍可以用来求解最优劝说。我们完整刻画了这类信念更新法则，并证明其包含许多文献中常见的非贝叶斯模型。我们进一步研究了非贝叶斯劝说中的一系列问题，包括显示原理何时成立，信息发送者偏好何种信念更新法则的接收者，以及发送者何时能从劝说中获利等。我们的方法对稳健劝说问题亦有所启示。
  • 张旭，助理教授，2020年5月获布朗大学经济学博士，现任职于香港科技大学（广州）创新创业与公共政策学域。其研究领域包括微观经济学理论、信息经济学、行为经济学与实验经济学。研究主题涵盖信息设计、非理性概率推断、信任与合作以及社会偏好等问题。主要研究成果发表于Journal of Political Economy、Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization等知名经济学国际期刊。
• May 18, 2023, Thursday
  • Speaker: 戴亮 上海交通大学安泰经济与管理学院
  • Title: Dynamic Contracting with Flexible Monitoring
  • Time: 14:00
  • Venue: C366
  • Chair:
  • Abstract: We study a principal’s joint design of optimal monitoring and compensation schemes to incentivize an agent by incorporating information design into a dynamic contracting framework. The principal can flexibly allocate her limited monitoring capacity between seeking evidence that confirms or contradicts the agent’s effort, as the basis for reward or punishment. When the agent’s continuation value is low, the principal seeks only confirmatory evidence. When it exceeds a threshold, the principal seeks mainly contradictory evidence. Importantly, the agent’s effort is perpetuated if and only if he is sufficiently productive.
  • Liang Dai is an Associate Professor of Economics at Antai College of Economics and Management, Shanghai Jiao Tong University. He obtained his Ph.D. in economics from Princeton University in 2015. His research focuses on applied microeconomic theory, and his work has been published in Journal of Economic Theory.
• April 20, 2023, Thursday
  • Speaker: 凤迪 瑞士洛桑大学商学院 博士候选人
  • Title: Efficiency in Multiple-type Housing Markets
  • Time: 15:30
  • Venue: C366
  • Chair:
  • Abstract: We consider multiple-type housing markets (Moulin, 1995), which extend Shapley-Scarf housing markets (Shapley and Scarf, 1974) from one dimension to higher dimensions. In this model, Pareto efficiency is incompatible with individual rationality and strategy- proofness (Konishi et al., 2001). Therefore, we consider two weaker efficiency properties: coordinatewise efficiency and pairwise efficiency. We show that these two properties both (i) are compatible with individual rationality and strategy-proofness, and (ii) help us to identify two specific mechanisms. To be more precise, on various domains of preference profiles, together with other well-studied properties (individual rationality, strategy-proofness, and non-bossiness), coordinatewise efficiency and pairwise efficiency respectively characterize two extensions of the top-trading- cycles mechanism (TTC): the coordinatewise top-trading-cycles mechanism (cTTC) and the bundle top-trading-cycles mechanism (bTTC). Moreover, we propose several variations of our efficiency properties, and we find that each of them is either satisfied by cTTC or bTTC, or results in an impossibility result. Therefore, our characterizations can be interpreted as a compatibility test: any reasonable efficiency property that is not satisfied by cTTC or bTTC could be considered as incompatible with individual rationality and strategy-proofness. For multiple-type housing markets with strict preferences, our characterization of bTTC constitutes the first characterization of an extension of the prominent TTC mechanism.
  • 凤迪，瑞士洛桑大学商学院博士候选人，瑞士自然科学基金资助研究员。目前从事个人选择理论，社会选择理论，机制设计，匹配理论，信息设计，以及博弈论在经济金融领域中的应用等科研工作。论文曾发表在International Journal of Economic Theory, IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications, IEEE INFOCOM等国际杂志及会议。
• April 20, 2023, Thursday
  • Speaker: Jérôme Renault 教授 图卢兹经济学院
  • Title: Strategic Experimentation with Privately Observed Payoffs
  • Time: 14:30
  • Venue: 腾讯会议542 566 273
  • Chair:
  • Abstract: We study a model of strategic experimentation where at every period, each of the two players can pull either a safe arm, or a risky arm at a positive cost. The risky arms of the players are perfectly correlated and may be either bad (with return always being zero), or good with i.i.d. returns (a certain positive return with a positive probability and zero payoff otherwise). Players play in turn and maximize discounted payoffs. The novelty of the model is that each player observes after each period the arm pulled by the other player, but not the return. We find that this leads to more experimentations than in the public observation case, and exhibits a new cutoff for the belief of a player for the arm begin good. At pure sequential equilibria, the players experiment up to this new cutoff, under-experimentation never happens but there are examples where players experiment way too much compared to the social optimum. At a mixed sequential equilibrium, the number of experiments in the bad state is almost surely finite, and at least one final belief is below the new cutoff. This is a joint work with Eilon Solan (Tel-Aviv U.) and Nicolas Vieille (HEC Paris).
  • Jérôme Renault is full professor of Mathematics at Toulouse School of Economics, and holder of the chair “Game Theory and Artificial Intelligence » at the AI institute ANITI. He obtained his PhD from University Paris 1 Pantheon-Sorbonne and has worked at University Paris Dauphine and Ecole Polytechnique. As a world-wide known expert on repeated games, stochastic games and incomplete-information games, his research works are published in leading journals of related fields likeMathematics of Operations Research,Theoretical Economics,Journal of Economic Theory,Annals of Applied Probability,SIAM Journal on Control and Optimization,Games and Economic Behavior,International Journal of Game Theory, etc. Having served for years on the editorial boards ofMathematics of Operations Research,Dynamic Games and Applications,Journal of Games and Dynamics, he is now the new editor-in-chief of theInternational Journal of Game Theory.
• April 14, 2023, Friday
  • Speaker: 张巧汐 厦门大学 助理教授
  • Title: Dynamic Vaccination
  • Time: 14:00
  • Venue: 经管院A204
  • Chair:
  • Abstract: We study the schedule of mass vaccination as a social experimentation problem featuring both information and payoff externality. Vaccination protects both the vaccinated and the unvaccinated against infection, but may cause adverse side-effects in the vaccinated. The safety of vaccination can be learned through monitoring the vaccinated population over time. We derive the socially optimal dynamic vaccination scheme and demonstrate that the arrival rate of information critically affects the pattern of the optimal scheme. We also study the strategic experimentation game in which players independently choose when to get vaccinated. We characterize a Markov equilibrium featuring gradual vaccination and show that the society under-experiments at every belief. Lastly, we provide simple policies that drive the equilibrium toward the social optimum.
  • 张巧汐，2016在Caltech获得博士学位，后在Universidad de Chile进行博士后研究，并在Universidad Diego Portales任职。现在厦门大学担任助理教授职位。她的研究领域涉及learning, experimentation, information transmission, mechanism design等与博弈论相关话题，并在Games and Economic Behavior, Theoretical Economics发表文章。
• April 6, 2023, Thursday
  • Speaker: 周臻 清华大学五道口金融学院
  • Title: Biased Wisdom from the Crowd
  • Time: 14:00
  • Venue: 经管院C366
  • Chair:
  • Abstract: 本文通过众筹下私人知情代理人的战略行为来研究信息聚合问题。在众筹活动中，代理人支付固定的捐款，并获得共同的回报，条件是项目吸引足够的投资。因此，只有当投资总额超过筹资门槛时，投资承诺才是重要的。这种结果性条件允许代理人从他人的智慧中受益。在均衡状态下，经纪人对自己的个人智慧不屑一顾，尽管他们的私人信息表明情况并非如此，他们还是会进行投资。然而，信息聚合确实有一个明显的偏向：众筹在批准理想的项目方面比筛选不理想的项目更有效。即使群体规模无限增长，假阳性误差仍然存在，而假阴性误差接近于零。我们进一步区分众筹与投票和协调游戏，通过比较结果性与关键性和制度变革条件，并将我们的模型扩展到考虑私人估值，固定资金目标，订阅成本，捐赠和动态学习。
  • 周臻博士是清华大学五道口金融学院副教授。周臻于2016年毕业于纽约大学，取得经济学博士学位。在此之前，他获得了清华大学的经济学硕士学位和复旦大学经济学学士学位。周臻现阶段的主要研究领域是信息经济学的理论研究以及其在金融中介与银行监管、公司金融、宏观经济等领域的运用。他近期的工作重点关注金融市场恐慌的形成机制以及针对恐慌的相关政策的有效性。他在 American Economic Review, Journal of Economic Theory, Games and Economic Behavior等一流学术期刊上发表过多篇论文。
• March 31, 2023, Monday
  • Speaker: 胡博 复旦大学经济学院 助理教授
  • Title: Middlemen and Reverse Factoring
  • Time: 10:00
  • Venue: 经管院A221
  • Chair:
  • Abstract: This paper introduces a novel framework for examining reverse factoring, a prominent type of supply chain finance. The model features a middleman who acts as a reseller for suppliers and offers them reverse factoring contracts. This enables the middleman to pool suppliers’ liquidity by deferring payment to them, while providing immediate payment to those with pressing liquidity needs. The middleman optimizes its profits by drawing liquidity from suppliers with high liquidity and low productivity, and gaining profits from suppliers with low liquidity and high productivity. We show that the market cost of liquidity, represented by the nominal interest rate, has a limited impact on reverse factoring, and identify conditions under which the middleman can operate without its own liquidity.
  • 胡博，现任复旦大学经济学院助理教授，博士毕业于阿姆斯特丹自由大学和丁伯根研究所。研究方向为应用微观理论，关注的研究问题包括搜寻经济学、平台经济等。其文章发表于Rand Journal of Economics,《经济研究》等国内外顶尖学术期刊。主持国家自然科学基金，上海市浦江人才计划等项目。胡博教授还担任International Economic Review, Journal of Health Economics等国际A类期刊的匿名审稿人。
• March 27, 2023, Monday
  • Speaker: 李三希
  • Title: 数字经济的学术前沿与学科建设
  • Time: 10:00
  • Venue: 经管院C366
  • Chair:
  • Abstract:
  • 李三希，中国人民大学教授，教育部级、国家级人才获得者，SSCI期刊Journal of Economics编委，《经济理论与经济管理》副主编。研究领域为信息经济学、产业组织理论和数字经济，发表论文三十余篇，发表期刊包括Journal of Public Economics、 Journal of Economics Theory、 Management Science、Games and Economic Behavior、《经济研究》、《经济学（季刊）》、《世界经济》、《中国工业经济》等。2016年获环球时报“希望英才奖”，2017年获中国信息经济学会“乌家培”奖，2019年获“张培刚发展经济学青年学者奖”

2022

• November 21, 2022, Monday
  • Speaker: Te Bao (Associate Professor, NTU)
  • Title: 论文写作的心得分享
  • Time: 14:30
  • Venue: 腾讯会议243-753-402
  • Chair:
  • Abstract: 论文选题和写作是科研工作者需要经常进行的日常活动。本次报告将围绕论文选题和写作中的常见问题分享一些看法和心得。讨论的话题包括如何看待论文选题中的趣味性、创新性、热门性等概念，以及论文写作在结构和语言上的一些常见注意点。
  • 主讲人简介：包特，新加坡南洋理工大学经济系长聘副教授。主要研究领域为实验经济学、行为金融和计算经济学。在Economic Journal, European Economic Review, Experimental Economics, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control等国际期刊和《经济研究》、《世界经济》、《管理世界》、《管理科学学报》等国内期刊发表论文30余篇。担任Singapore Economic Review的副编辑和多家学术期刊和科研基金的外部评审。
• November 17, 2022, Tuesday
  • Speaker: 汪通 爱丁堡大学商学院
  • Title: Topics on Research in Blockchain Economics (II)
  • Time: 18:30
  • Venue: 腾讯会议：988873514
  • Chair: 李晓蹊
  • Abstract: This short course of two lectures reviews some recent literature on the following topics: Blockchain Economics, Tokenomics, Social Governance. Reading List: https://docs.qq.com/doc/DS3NFZndNVVVaem1i
  • 汪通博士现为爱丁堡大学商学院商业经济学副教授（Senior Lecturer），图卢兹经济学院经济学博士。加入爱丁堡大学工作前，于欧洲大学学院担任让·莫奈研究员，从事规制和竞争政策分析的研究工作。其主要研究兴趣为：产业组织理论、区块链机制设计和应用，以及高科技在公司金融上的应用。汪通博士的工作发表于多家国际高水平杂志，诸如Journal of Industrial Economics, Journal of Economic Theory，European Journal of Finance等。
• November 15, 2022, Tuesday
  • Speaker: 汪通 爱丁堡大学商学院
  • Title: Topics on Research in Blockchain Economics (I)
  • Time: 18:30
  • Venue: 腾讯会议：988873514
  • Chair: 李晓蹊
  • Abstract: This short course of two lectures reviews some recent literature on the following topics: Blockchain Economics, Tokenomics, Social Governance. Reading List: https://docs.qq.com/doc/DS3NFZndNVVVaem1i
  • 汪通博士现为爱丁堡大学商学院商业经济学副教授（Senior Lecturer），图卢兹经济学院经济学博士。加入爱丁堡大学工作前，于欧洲大学学院担任让·莫奈研究员，从事规制和竞争政策分析的研究工作。其主要研究兴趣为：产业组织理论、区块链机制设计和应用，以及高科技在公司金融上的应用。汪通博士的工作发表于多家国际高水平杂志，诸如Journal of Industrial Economics, Journal of Economic Theory，European Journal of Finance等。
• October 28, 2022, Friday
  • Speaker: 从佳佳 复旦大学
  • Title: The effects of personal data management on competition and welfare
  • Time: 14:00
  • Venue: 腾讯会议316 250 349
  • Chair: 韩立宁
  • Abstract: We consider a duopoly model in which consumers purchase products in two independent markets: one is for data collection, and another is for data application. In the data application market, each firm can offer personalized prices to its targeted customers and a uniform price to untargeted consumers. However, each firm’s targeted customers can erase their data from the database to become untargeted consumers by incurring a fixed cost before the firms offer prices. We show that privacy management can harm the total surplus, firms, and consumers, except for opt-out consumers in the data application market. Consumers’ privacy management also intensifies competition in the data collection market, lowering the two-market profits and benefiting consumers in this market. We extend the model in several directions.
  • 从佳佳，复旦大学管理学院应用经济学系副教授，于2018年在香港大学获得博士学位。研究方向为产业组织理论和应用微观经济学，主要关注企业并购、平台竞争策略、以及数据在产业经济中的作用等主题。研究成果发表于RAND Journal of Economics, Management Science, Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization等期刊。
• September 22, 2022, Thursday
  • Speaker: 张博宇 北京师范大学
  • Title: 带有网络结构的演化博弈动态
  • Time: 15:30
  • Venue: 腾讯会议485 823 980
  • Chair: 李晓蹊
  • Abstract: 数字经济时代，人们的博弈互动关系呈现出复杂的网络特征。近年来网络博弈理论发展迅猛，并在群体决策、舆情传播、投票选举等方面有广泛的应用。网络博弈中的一个关键问题是网络结构如何影响和个体和群体行为演化。本报告将首先介绍演化博弈和演化动力学相关的基本概念，然后介绍报告人和合作者在对称和非对称网络演化博弈动力学方面的一些研究。最后在此基础上讨论博弈互动网络结构和信息网络结构在不同博弈场景中，对个体和群体行为特别是合作和公平行为及舆情传播的影响。
  • 张博宇，北京师范大学数学科学学院，教授、博士生导师，行为与博弈决策实验室主任。2006年和2009年于北京师范大学获学士和硕士学位，2012年于奥地利维也纳大学获博士学位。2012年加入北京师范大学。主要研究方向包括：演化博弈和学习模型、激励机制设计、网络博弈、行为实验和行为大数据等。在PNAS，One Earth，Operations Research，Games and Economic Behaviors，Experimental Economics等期刊发表论文40余篇。研究成果被Nature和PNAS专门发文报道，被美国科学院院士、欧洲科学院院士等多位国际权威专家引用。主持国家自然科学基金重点项目和优秀青年基金等项目。担任Dynamic Games and Applications副主编和多个期刊编委。
• June 30, 2022, Thursday
  • Speaker: Zhang, Mengxi (Assistant Professor, University of Bonn)
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• June 16, 2022, Thursday
  • Speaker: Kor Chong Luck Ryan (PhD student, National University of Singapore)
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• June 14, 2022, Thursday
  • Speaker: Teh, Tat-How (Assistant Professor, Chinese University of Hong Kong (Shenzhen))
  • Title: Multihoming and oligopolistic platform competition
  • Time: 14:00–15:30
  • Venue: Tencent Meeting 750-561-651
  • Chair: Shen, Bo
  • Abstract: We provide a general framework to analyze competition between any number of symmetric two-sided platforms, in which buyers and sellers can multihome, and platforms compete on transaction fees charged on both sides. The framework allows buyers and sellers to have heterogenous benefits from using platforms for transactions, and additionally, buyers to have idiosyncratic preferences over using the different platforms. We show how key primitives such as the number of platforms, the fraction of buyers that find multihoming costly, the value of transactions for buyers and sellers, and the degree of user heterogeneity jointly determine the level and structure of platform fees. Even though having more platforms always reduces the total fee charged to the two sides, whether it shifts the fee structure in favor of buyers or sellers depends on whether most of the buyers are singlehoming or multihoming.
  • Tat-How Teh joined The Chinese University of Hong Kong (Shenzhen) as an assistant professor in economics since September 2021. Prior to that, he studied at the National University of Singapore (NUS) for his PhD in economics. His research interests are platform economics, consumer search, industrial organization theory, and more generally applied microeconomic theory. His work has been published in top academic journals, such as RAND Journal of Economics, American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, and Games and Economic Behavior.
• June 9, 2022, Thursday
  • Speaker: Zhao, Wei (Assistant Professor, Renmin University of China)
  • Title: Contracting over Persistent Information
  • Time: 14:00–15:30
  • Venue: Tencent Meeting
  • Chair: Li, Xiaoxi
  • Abstract: We consider a dynamic principal-agent problem, where the sole instrument the principal has to incentivize the agent is the disclosure of information. The principal aims at maximizing the (discounted) number of times the agent chooses the principal’s preferred action. We show that there exists an optimal policy, where the principal recommends its most preferred action and discloses information as a reward in the next period, until either this action becomes statically optimal for the agent or the agent perfectly learns the state. If the agent perfectly learns the state with probability one under this policy, then learning occurs in finite time; the more patient the agent, the later he learns the state.
  • 赵玮，巴黎高等商学院在读博士，将于今年入职中国人民大学经济学院。主要研究领域为动态信息设计、网络理论和金融经济学，已有两篇论文处于高水平期刊《Theoretical Economics》和《International Economic Review》的revise and resubmit阶段。
• June 2, 2022, Thursday
  • Speaker: Xue, Jingyi (Associate Professor, Singapore Management University)
  • Title: Local dominance
  • Time: 14:00–15:30
  • Venue: Tencent Meeting 105-956-900
  • Chair: Han, Lining
  • Abstract: We define a local notion of dominance that speaks to the true choice problem between actions in a game tree. A strategy is weakly (obviously) dominant if and only if it prescribes a locally weakly (obviously) dominant action at every decision node, therefore any dynamic decomposition of a direct mechanism that preserves (obvious) strategy-proofness is robust to the lack of global planning. Further, we identify forms of rough contingent reasoning and blurred foresight that are driven by the game tree, and we construct a dynamic game that implements the Top Trading Cycles allocation under the corresponding notion of very local dominance.
  • 薛静怡，新加坡管理大学副教授，博士毕业于美国莱斯大学。主要研究领域为公平分配、决策理论和机制设计，研究成果发表于Journal of Economic Theory、Economic Theory等高水平期刊。
• May 26, 2022, Thursday
  • Speaker: Xu, Xinyi (Assistant Professor, Sun Yat-sen University)
  • Title: Optimal royalty auction with bidder heterogeneity and seller moral hazard
  • Time: 14:00–15:30
  • Venue: Tencent Meeting 896-901-823
  • Chair: Sun, Xiang
  • Abstract: This paper studies optimal royalty auction design when bidders are heterogeneous in type distributions, and seller moral hazard arises in the form of post-auction effort input. By the communication revelation principle, we first characterize all incentive compatible, individual rational, and sequential rational direct mechanisms (feasible direct mechanisms). Then, we apply the inequalities for the covariance of monotone functions to derive the upper bound of seller’s expected payoff for all feasible direct mechanisms and provide a mechanism to attain the upper bound, which is called the optimal royalty auction mechanism. The optimal mechanism selects the bidder of the highest non-negative virtual surplus among all participants and generates a deterministic post-auction effort recommendation for the seller. We construct a“quasi-dominant strategy”royalty auction that uses the information of the first and the second highest bids to implement the optimal mechanism. We then consider discrimination in allocation and winner’s payment. Lastly, we discuss the impact of royalty rate, and compare the characteristics and discrimination of the optimal auctions with that in the case of post-auction perfect information.
  • 徐欣毅，中山大学岭南学院助理教授，于2017年毕业于香港中文大学，获经济学博士学位。主要研究领域为契约理论和机制设计。研究成果发表于Journal of Mathematical Economics.主持国家课题一项。
• May 19, 2022, Thursday
  • Speaker: Feng, Xin (Associate Professor, Nanjing University)
  • Title: Ambiguous Persuasion in Contests
  • Time: 14:00–15:30
  • Venue: Tencent Meeting 414-365-596
  • Chair: Sun, Xiang
  • Abstract: We study optimal information disclosure via an ambiguous persuasion approach in a two-player contest. The designer can precommit to an ambiguous device to influence the uninformed contestant’s belief about his opponent’ s private type. We fully characterize the optimal ambiguous information structures when players are maxmin expected utility (MMEU) maximizers. Depending on the prior, it is optimal either to induce maximal ambiguity or to simply use deterministic information policies. We provide a necessary and sufficient condition under which an effort-maximizing organizer can benefit strictly more from using ambiguous persuasion than from using the optimal Bayesian device.
  • 冯欣，南京大学商学院副教授，新加坡国立大学经济学博士。主要研究领域为应用微观理论，具体包括拍卖理论、竞赛理论、信息设计等。研究成果发表(含接受)于American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, Journal of Public Economics, International Journal of Game Theory, Journal of Mathematical Economics, Economic Inquiry, Economics Letters等经济学学术期刊。
• May 19, 2022, Thursday
  • Speaker: Guo, Huiyi (Assistant Professor, TAMU)
  • Title: Learning by Consuming: Sequential Screening with Endogenous Information Provision
  • Time: 10:00–11:30
  • Venue: Tencent Meeting 538-579-699
  • Chair: Han, Lining
  • Abstract: We study the revenue-maximizing mechanism, in which a seller sells one unit of a divisible good to a buyer in two stages. In stage one, the buyer can rely on his private, rough valuation of the good to determine his first-stage consumption level. Consuming more leads to a more precise private valuation estimate of the good in stage two, after which he determines his second-stage consumption level. Since the single-crossing condition fails, the monotonicity in allocation plus the envelope condition are not sufficient for global incentive compatibility. The optimum is a menu of contracts, consisting of a first-stage price-quantity pair and a second-stage per-unit price for the remaining quantity. A larger first-stage quantity is paired with a higher first-stage price but a lower second-stage per- unit price. In equilibrium, a higher first-stage valuation buyer pays more to have higher first-stage consumption and enjoys a lower second-stage price.
  • 郭汇一，Texas A&M University经济学助理教授。University of Iowa经济学博士。主要研究领域为微观经济学，机制设计等。有多篇论文发表于Journal of Economic Theory, American Economic Journal: Micro, Games and Economic Behavior, Economic Theory等国际期刊。
• May 12, 2022, Thursday
  • Speaker: Chen, Zhuoqiong (Assistant Professor, HIT Shenzhen)
  • Title: Know Thy Enemy: Information Acquisition in Contests
  • Time: 12:30–14:00
  • Venue: Tencent Meeting 735-157-030
  • Chair: Han, Lining
  • Abstract: This paper studies the incentives for and the consequences of information acquisition about opponents in contests with independent private values. Two players can spy on each other by privately acquiring a costly, noisy, and private signal about the opponent’s value by choosing the signal’s accuracy before the contest. Given that they spy on each other, we characterize the unique monotonic equilibrium in the contest whenever it exists. The players may not have the incentives to acquire information when they do not observe each other’s accuracies of signals, and always have the incentives when they do observe the accuracies. Acquiring information about opponents may lead to allocative inefficiency but always benefits both players even accounting for its costs.
  • 陈倬琼，哈尔滨工业大学（深圳）经济管理学院助理教授，毕业于伦敦政治经济学院，此前获得北京大学经济学硕士、香港大学金融学硕士学位。主要研究方向是应用博弈论、行为经济学、数字经济学，研究见于European Economic Review, Journal of Mathematical Economics等。
• April 28, 2022, Thursday
  • Speaker: Kuang, Zhonghong (Assistant Professor, Renmin University of China)
  • Title: Stable Market Segmentation Against Price Discrimination
  • Time: 14:00–15:30
  • Venue: Tencent Meeting 345-339-175
  • Chair: Sun, Xiang
  • Abstract: In this paper, we consider a novel market segmentation problem capturing the impact of the tag-related regulation on tag-based price discrimination in e-commerce. In contrast to the literature, tag-editable market segmentation (TEMS) is driven by consumer incentives. We apply the collective-decision perspective on the TEMS problem and raise a new concept of stable market segmentation, which captures how the strategic consumers form a market segmentation. We also propose the concept of group stable market segmentation for the scenarios where consumers can collude or interact with each other. We pin down all possible welfare consequences and find that TEMS can have (group) stable market segmentations maximizing the social welfare and consumer surplus. Specifically, the producer surplus remains at the uniform monopoly level in all (group) stable segmentations. Meanwhile, the consumer surplus can reach any value between the maximum consumer surplus and the consumer surplus under the uniform monopoly price. Our result immediately reveals that some (not all) buyer-optimal outcomes can survive under strategic consumers. Moreover, when surplus pairs are located at the efficient frontier, stable and group stable are equivalent definitions. All social-optimal stable segmentations share the same price profile over sub-markets. The price profile can be solved by a polynomial algorithm and used to find all social-optimal stable segmentations. We also incorporate tag-selection cost and the possibility where willingness-to-pay is continuously distributed. Our analysis provides a novel perspective on market-power and privacy regulations in e-commerce: Democratize the market-power regulation by crowdsourcing strategic choices of consumers. Rather than forbidding tag-based price discrimination, the policymaker shall allow and enforce the tag-editable policy.
  • 邝仲弘，中国人民大学经济学院助理教授，中国人民大学数字经济研究中心研究员，中国人民大学企业与组织理论研究中心研究员、研讨会协调人。主要研究领域包括博弈论、信息经济学、产业组织理论等领域，发表主要作者论文5篇，主持国家自然科学基金青年基金等纵向项目。
• April 14, 2022, Thursday
  • Speaker: Hu, Ju (Assistant Professor, Peking University)
  • Title: Industry-optimal Information in Search Market
  • Time: 14:00–15:30
  • Venue: Tencent Meeting 246-772-862
  • Chair: Ding, Yucheng
  • Abstract: This paper studies the welfare effects of information in a sequential consumer search environment. Consumers search in the market and observe a noisy signal about the match value upon being matched with a firm, based on which they make their purchasing decisions. We construct the class of conditional unit-elastic demand signal distributions such that every equilibrium that can possibly arise under a feasible signal distribution can be achieved by a signal distribution within this class, based on which we investigate the industry-optimal information in this market. Contrary to the conventional wisdom that lower search cost promotes competition and reduces industry surplus, we find that the optimal industry surplus is strictly increasing as the search cost decreases. We also characterize the industry-optimal signal distribution for a large class of value distributions.
  • 胡岠，宾夕法尼亚大学经济学博士，北京大学国家发展研究院教授。主要研究领域是微观经济理论、博弈论和信息经济学。研究成果发表于经济理论的顶级期刊Journal of Economic Theory，The Rand Journal of Economics等。

2021

• December 17, 2021, Thursday
  • Speaker: Meng, Delong (Assistant Professor, Shanghai Jiao Tong University)
  • Title: The Design and Interpretation of Information
  • Time: 14:30–16:00
  • Venue: Tencent Meeting 167-966-202
  • Chair: Xiao, Mingjun
  • Abstract: A sender designs an experiment that generates a signal about an uncertain binary state and then interprets the realized signal. The receiver adopts the sender’s interpretation if the signal is more likely under the proposed interpretation than under the experiment. Using a concavification approach, we characterize the sender’s optimal strategy to generate and interpret signals. Strategic interpretation distorts the receiver’s action compared to a Bayesian decision maker, but encourages the sender to choose a more informative experiment ex ante.
  • 孟德隆，博士，上海交通大学安泰经济与管理学院助理教授，2019年获斯坦福大学经济学博士学位，主要研究微观经济理论、行为经济学、政治经济学。
• December 2, 2021, Thursday
  • Speaker: Hu, Gaoji (Associate Professor, Shanghai University of Finance and Economics)
  • Title: A Theory of Revealed Indirect Preference
  • Time: 14:30–16:00
  • Venue: Tencent Meeting 700 653 643
  • Chair: Han, Lining
  • Abstract: A preference over menus is said to be an indirect preference if it is induced by a preference over the objects that make up those menus, i.e., a menu A is ranked over B whenever A contains an object that is preferred to every object in B. The basic question we address in this paper is the following: suppose an observer has partial information of an agent’s ranking over certain menus; what necessary and sufficient conditions on those rankings guarantee the existence of a preference over objects that induces the observed menu rankings? Our basic result has a wide variety of applications.
  • 虎高计，上海财经大学经济学院副教授。新加坡国立大学经济学博士。主要研究领域为市场设计，机制设计等。有多篇论文发表于Theoretical Economics，Games and Economic Behavior等国际期刊。
• November 18, 2021, Thursday
  • Speaker: Liu, Shuo (Assistant Professor, Peking University)
  • Title: Happy Times: Identification from Ordered Response Data
  • Time: 14:00–15:30
  • Venue: Tencent Meenting 208 406 942
  • Chair: Sun, Xiang
  • Abstract: Surveys that measure subjective states like happiness or preferences often generate ordinal data. Ordered response models, which are commonly used to analyze such data, suffer from a fundamental identification problem. Their conclusions depend entirely on unjustified assumptions about the distribution of a latent variable. In this paper, we propose using survey response times to solve that problem. Response times contain information about the distribution of the latent variable, even among subjects who give the same ordinal survey response. We provide conditions under which group differences in, for example, happiness are identified. We apply our method to an online survey and obtain evidence that happiness follows distributions for which traditional assumptions are valid. The evidence is more mixed for our preference questions, and traditional assumptions are not confirmed for our question about political attitudes.
  • Shuo Liu is an assistant professor of economics at the Guanghua School of Management, Peking University. His research interests include organizational economics, game theory, and behavioral IO. He received his PhD in Economics from the University of Zurich in 2019. His research papers have been published in top economics and mathematics journals such as the RAND Journal of Economics, Theoretical Economics, Games and Economic Behavior, European Economic Review, Economic Theory, and Set-Valued and Variational Analysis。
• July 7, 2021, Wednesday
  • Speaker: Zeng, Huaxia (Associate Professor, Shanghai University of Finance and Economics)
  • Title: A Taxonomy of Non-dictatorial Domains
  • Time: 10:00–11:30
  • Venue: A208
  • Chair: Han, Lining
  • Abstract: A preference domain is called a non-dictatorial domain if it allows the design of unanimous social choice functions (henceforth, rules) that are non-dictatorial and strategy-proof; otherwise it is called a dictatorial domain. We propose a richness condition on the domain and establish that the unique seconds property (introduced by Aswal, Chatterji, and Sen (2003)) separates non-dictatorial domains from dictatorial domains. The principal contribution of the paper is the subsequent exhaustive classification of all rich non-dictatorial domains based on a simple property of two-voter rules called invariance. The preference domains that constitute the classification are semi-single-peaked domains (introduced by Chatterji, Sanver, and Sen (2013)) and semi-hybrid domains (introduced here) which are two appropriate weakenings of single-peaked domains and which, importantly, are shown to allow strategy-proof rules to depend on non-peak information of voters’ preferences. As a refinement of the classification, single-peaked domains and hybrid domains emerge as the only rich preference domains that force strategy-proof rules to be determined completely by the peaks of voters’ preferences.
  • 曾华夏，上海财经大学经济学院副教授。新加坡管理大学经济学博士。主要研究领域为机制设计，微观经济理论等。有多篇论文发表于Theoretical Economics，Journal of Economic Theory，Games and Economic Behavior等国际期刊。
• June 9, 2021, Wednesday
  • Speaker: Yu, Jun (tenured Associate Professor, Shanghai University of Finance and Economics)
  • Title: Consumer Search with Blind Buying
  • Time: 10:00–11:30
  • Venue: A208
  • Chair: Sun, Xiang
  • Abstract: This article proposes a sequential search model in which consumers freely observe products’ prices and prior values before a search and decide whether and in which order to identify the match values for a positive search cost. We allow consumers to purchase a product without incurring a search cost to inspect the match value, which we call “blind buying”, under which the optimal search policy is no longer as per Weitzman (1979). When the match value has a symmetric distribution, both consumers and firms are indifferent to the search order, conditional on that blind buying does not take place in the first stage. We show that blind buying always increases total welfare, and increases market prices and industrial profits if and only if the first-sample search cost is below a threshold value. An increase in the search cost reduces equilibrium prices. Such a result is consistent with existing price-directed search models, but the underlying mechanisms are different. We also show that being prominent can adversely affect a firm if the match value is asymmetrically distributed, which contrasts the literature.
  • 喻俊，本科毕业于武汉大学经济与管理学院数理经济与数理金融系（高级研究中心），2014年于美国西北大学（Northwestern University）获得经济学博士学位，现为上海财经大学经济学院常任副教授，研究方向包括微观经济理论，产业组织理论和消费者搜寻理论。
• May 26, 2021, Wednesday
  • Speaker: Li, Xueheng (Assistant Professor, Nanjing Audit University)
  • Title: The Market for Lemons and Liars
  • Time: 14:00–15:30
  • Venue: A208
  • Chair: Sun, Xiang
  • Abstract: Economists have argued that asymmetry information would lead to adverse selection, prohibiting mutually beneficial transactions. Yet, abundant experimental evidence now shows that some individuals will voluntarily and truthfully disclose private information even if it is not in their benefits to do so. Thus, voluntary truth-telling has been proposed to mitigate adverse selection. We examine this conjecture theoretically and experimentally. We consider an environment in which individuals with heterogeneous preferences for truth-telling can self-select into different markets to perform a selling task. The experiment tests the following hypotheses: (i) if naive buyers are many, individuals without lying aversion will self-select into the ‘cheap-talk market’ where they can send any message to the buyer; in contrast, (ii) individuals with a strong preference for truth-telling will self-select into the ‘verifiable-message market’ where they can send only truthful but possibly vague messages; consequently, (iii) adverse selection occurs in the cheap-talk market as if all individuals are material payoff maximizers.
  • 李学恒，2018年博士毕业于英国诺丁汉大学，研究领域包括社会经济网络和行为博弈理论，现为南京审计大学的助理教授。
• May 21, 2021, Friday
  • Speaker: Kim, Kwanghyun (Assistant Professor, Capital University of Economics and Business)
  • Title: First-Price Auctions with Maxmin Expected Utility Bidders
  • Time: 10:00–11:30
  • Venue: B247
  • Chair: Kim, Daehyun
  • Abstract: This paper studies the first-price auction with independent private valuations, wherein each bidder faces ambiguity about the probability distribution from which the other bidders’ valuations for the item are drawn. Each bidder is ambiguity averse and this ambiguity is represented by a set of priors. In this informational setting, the paper identifies a maxmin Bayesian Nash equilibrium of the auction. It also shows that the bidders’ bids and the seller’s expected revenue increase as the level of the bidders’ ambiguity increases if the bidders’ worst belief under the higher ambiguity level dominates the worst belief under the lower ambiguity level in terms of the inverse hazard rate. Finally, the paper shows that the seller’s expected revenue from the first-price auction is greater than that from the second-price auction.
  • Kwanghyun Kim，首都经济贸易大学国际经济管理学院助理教授。伊利诺伊大学香槟分校经济学博士。主要研究领域为机制设计，微观经济理论等。
• May 19, 2021, Wednesday
  • Speaker: Sun, Yang (Associate Research Fellow, Sichuan University)
  • Title: Myopic Formation of Networks
  • Time: 14:00–15:30
  • Venue: A208
  • Chair: Sun, Xiang
  • Abstract: We study the problem of designing network sequentially and myopically when agents play a complementary network game. In each period, the planner connects two unlinked agents in the network formed by previous stages to achieve the highest equilibrium welfare. We show that the network formation process is unique in the sense that the formed network is quasi-complete in each period regardless the strength of complementary effect. This result refines the prediction of (globally) efficient network in the literature by discriminating nested split graphs. Finally, we show that when the strength of network effect is small and the total number of links is large, both myopically and globally efficient network is quasi-complete.
  • 孙阳，四川大学经济学院特聘副研究员，研究领域为博弈论、网络经济学。他的学术工作发表于Economic Theory、Economic Modelling等经济学重要期刊。
• May 12, 2021, Wednesday
  • Speaker: Wu, Xingye (Assistant Professor, Tsinghua University)
  • Title: A Notion of Voting Complexity (joint with Qinggong Wu)
  • Time: 14:00–15:30
  • Venue: B224
  • Chair: Sun, Xiang
  • Abstract: We develop a measure of complexity of a voting problem in terms of the dimensionality of its intermediate type space introduced by Grandmont (1978). A voting problem with a lower dimensionality is less vulnerable to the problem of voting cycles and more likely to have a candidate that has a decent popular support.
  • 吴星晔，2018年毕业于哥伦比亚大学，现为清华经管学院经济系助理教授，研究兴趣包括微观经济学理论，机制设计和匹配理论。
• May 7, 2021, Friday
  • Speaker: Xu, Menghan (Assistant Professor, Xiamen University)
  • Title: Incentivizing Organ Donation Under Blood-Type Compatibility Constraints: Theory and Experiment
  • Time: 14:00–15:30
  • Venue: B247
  • Chair: Kim, Deahyun
  • Abstract: This paper studies the efficacy of the donor-priority rule in promoting deceased organ donation under blood-type compatibility constraints in both theory and the laboratory. Compared with an allocation policy in which transplantations are operated only within the same blood-type group, we find that transferring organs across blood-type compatible groups discourages the donation incentives of hard-to-match agents, and reduces the supply of the more widely acceptable type of organs. Meanwhile, the easy-to-match agents have higher incentives to donate. At the aggregate level, our theoretical and experimental results both suggest that the aggregate donation rate is lower under allocation policies that allow blood-type compatible transplants among different blood-type groups.
  • 许梦涵，厦门大学经济学院与王亚南经济研究院助理教授。加州大学洛杉矶分校经济学博士。主要研究领域为微观经济理论、机制设计、产业组织理论等。主要研究成果发表于Journal of Economic Theory等国际学术期刊上。
• April 30, 2021, Friday
  • Speaker: Song, Yangbo (Assistant Professor, The Chinese University of Hong Kong Shenzhen)
  • Title: Global Manipulation by Local Obfuscation
  • Time: 14:00–15:30
  • Venue: B249
  • Chair: Kim, Daehyun
  • Abstract: We study adversarial information design in a regime-change context. A continuum of agents simultaneously choose whether to attack the current regime. The attack succeeds if and only if the mass of attackers outweighs the regime’s strength. A designer manipulates information about the regime’s strength to maintain the status quo. Our optimal information structure exhibits local obfuscation: some agents receive a signal matching the regime’s true strength, and others receive an elevated signal professing slightly higher strength. This policy is the unique limit of finite-signal problems. Public signals are strictly suboptimal, and in some cases where public signals become futile, local obfuscation guarantees the collapse of agents’ coordination.
  • 宋阳波，本科毕业于香港大学经济金融系，于加州大学洛杉矶分校获得经济学博士学位，现于香港中文大学（深圳）经管学院任助理教授。研究方向为博弈论、网络经济学和信息经济学，论文见于Journal of Economic Theory, Games and Economic Behavior, Economic Theory, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization等国际知名期刊。目前主要研究内容包括超模博弈中的信息设计，网络中的信息不对称与合约设计，意识局限对策略行为的影响等。
• March 24, 2021, Wednesday
  • Speaker: Chen, Wanyi (Associate Research Fellow, University of Science and Technology of China)
  • Title: Strategic Hospital Runs
  • Time: 14:00–15:30
  • Venue: B249
  • Chair: Wei, Lijia
  • Abstract: Hospital runs are of primary concern in a pandemic and are especially devastating when non-severe patients crowd out severe ones. We study a rushing game for hospital service. The fear of future scarcity may drive non-severe patients to inefficiently seek early treatment. The forward-looking nature induces a chain effect–expecting a far future run realizes the near future run, which in turn induces the current run. This feature triggers the run long before the capacity is insufficient for severe patients. Due to strategic rushing, a higher capacity may induce more devastating hospital crowding out. On the other hand, inefficient waiting can also occur. A planner would allocate a fraction of medical resources to non-urgent patients to alleviate future congestion, but individuals do not consider this externality of future overload. Besides, the strategic complementarity can also lead to self-fulling runs. We characterize conditions for such scenarios to occur.
  • 陈琬祎，中国科学技术大学管理学院特任副教授/特任副研究员。2018年毕业于美国威斯康辛大学麦迪逊分校，获经济学博士学位。2011年毕业于武汉大学数理经济与数理金融实验班，获得金融学与应用数学学位。主要研究领域为信息经济学、博弈论，和应用微观经济学。

2020

• December 16, 2020, Wednesday
  • Speaker: Yao, Zhiyong (Associate Professor, Fudan University)
  • Title: Upstream Collusion with Down Stream Compensation
  • Time: 10:00–11:30
  • Venue: A208
  • Chair: Ding, Yucheng
  • Abstract: Many cartels exist in supply chains with powerful buyers. These buyers have the incentive and information to report the cartel to the antitrust authorities or sue the cartel members. Therefore, successful upstream collusions not only need to prevent the collusive members to deviate, but also has to compensate the downstream firms. Using repeat game theory, this paper studies the stability of upstream collusion, taking into account the downstream compensation. Different from the standard collusion theory, the relationship between cartel incidence and market concentration is likely to be non-monotonic, or it is the inverted U-shape.
  • 姚志勇：复旦大学管理学院产业经济学系副教授,北京大学经济学学士和硕士，美国加州大学洛杉矶分校经济学博士，主要从事产业经济学、管理经济学教学和科研工作，论文发表于Rand Journal of Economics,Journal of Mathematical Economics等学术期刊，主持国家自然科学基金面上项目等多项国家与省部级科研项目。

2019

• November 21, 2019, Thursday
  • Speaker: Wang, Tao (Assistant Professor, Nanjing Audit University)
  • Title: Strong Stochastic Dominance
  • Time: 14:00–15:30
  • Venue: A204
  • Chair: Li, Xiaoxi
  • Abstract: We generalize the monotone likelihood ratio property of univariate random variables. We say that one distribution strongly stochastically dominates another if the former is a convex transformation of the latter. The main contribution of this paper is the introduction of an equivalent condition phrased in terms of expectations. Several economic applications of this equivalence condition are given. These applications include monotone comparative statics under uncertainty, Bayesian learning and dynamics, pricing of risky assets, implications to a portfolio’s value-at-risk and to production expansions.
  • 王韬，南京审计大学社会与经济研究院助理教授，于纽约州立大学石溪分校获得博士学位，在特拉维夫大学进行过博士后研究。研究领域为信息经济学、产业组织理论、博弈论。部分研究成果已在国际期刊International Journal of Industrial Organization，Review of Industrial Organization上发表。
• November 7, 2019, Thursday
  • Speaker: Lu, Yuanzhu (Central University of Finance and Economics)
  • Title: 挂靠投标腐败对招标方有害吗？
  • Time: 15:00–16:30
  • Venue: B249
  • Chair: Shen, Bo
  • Abstract: 本文在第一分值多维招投标的框架下，研究了受贿的招标代理人和行贿者勾结进行串标，即招标代理人允许行贿者挂靠投标这一腐败形式对于招投标活动的影响。研究发现，挂靠投标腐败对竞标者投标组合中承诺的质量没有影响。行贿者的低评分竞标函数比诚实竞标者的更加弱势，在一定的条件下，行贿者的高评分竞标函数比诚实竞标者的更加激进。当招标代理人和出借资质的企业要求从行贿者处获得的回报占行贿者所获额外利润的比例增加时，行贿者的高评分竞标策略和低评分竞标策略都变得更加弱势。挂靠投标腐败的存在降低了招投标活动的效率。在行贿者的高评分竞标函数比诚实竞标者的更加激进这一合理假设下，行贿者在招投标中获胜的概率增加，诚实竞标者的获胜概率和期望利润都下降，招标人的期望效用可能增加也可能下降。
  • 卢远瞩，中央财经大学中国经济与管理研究院经济学教授，博士生导师，中央财经大学学术委员会理论经济学部委员，专业技术职务评审委员会经济学科组评委。北京大学理学学士、经济学双学士、经济学硕士，新加坡国立大学经济学博士。主要研究领域为产业组织理论，在国际国内经济学期刊发表论文近30篇，论文见于International Journal of Industrial Organization, Oxford Economic Papers,《经济学（季刊）》等著名期刊。2011年入选教育部新世纪优秀人才支持计划，2014年获得霍英东教育基金会第14届高等院校青年教师奖三等奖，2017年获得北京市优秀教师称号。
• September 18, 2019, Wednesday
  • Speaker: Solan, Eilon (Professor, Tel Aviv University)
  • Title: Optimal Dynamic Inspection
  • Time: 10:00–11:30
  • Venue: A208
  • Chair: Li, Xiaoxi
  • Abstract: We study a discounted repeated inspection game with two agents and one regulator. Both agents may profit by violating certain rules, while the regulator can inspect at most one agent in each period, inflicting a punishment on an agent who is caught violating the rules. The goal of the regulator is to minimize the discounted number of violations, and she has a commitment power. We identify the regulator’s optimal inspection strategy, and show that it significantly outperforms the inspection strategies studied in the literature.
  • Eilon Solan现为以色列特拉维夫大学统计与运筹学系教授，世界知名的博弈论、概率论专家，在随机博弈、马尔可夫决策过程、社会学习等领域做出了众多突出科学贡献。他的研究成果发表于PNAS、Annals of Probability、Annals of Statistics, Econometrica、Operations Research、SIAM Control and Optimization、Mathematics of Operations Research、Journal of Economic Theory、Games and Economics Behavior等高水平学术期刊。多年来一直担任多个国际学术期刊编委，目前Eilon Solan教授还是以色列和特拉维夫大学多个拔尖学生科学项目的负责人，如Beno Arbel Program，Good To Know project, training program of the Israeli team to the International Mathematics Olympiad。Eilon Solan教授也是多个计算机技术专利的共同发明人，他与同事在1997年最早申请了如今广泛使用的验证码专利技术CAPTCHA。
• June 27, 2019, Thursday
  • Speaker: Miao, Bin (Professor, Shanghai University of Finance and Economics)
  • Title: Multiple-Switching Behavior in the Elicitation of Risk Preferences
  • Time: 10:30–11:30
  • Venue: A208
  • Chair: Sun, Xiang
  • Abstract: While it is commonly observed that subjects switch multiple times in the choice list elicitation of risk preference, little has been done to systematically examine the nature of this multiple switching behavior (MSB). We differentiate two types of MSB: for odd (even) MSB, subjects initially choose options on the left hand side, and eventually switch to options on the right (left) hand side. In two experiments, we observe that subjects with higher frequency of odd MSB are more likely to deliberately randomize in repeated choices presented three times in a row (Agranov and Ortoleva, 2017), and to exhibit Allais-type behavior as well as to satisfy reduction of compound lottery axiom at the same time. By contrast, we show that subjects with higher frequency of even MSB are more likely to violate first-order stochastic dominance. Our results support models of deliberate randomization to partially account for MSB, and enable a further discrimination among models of stochastic choice.
• May 31, 2019, Friday
  • Speaker: Dessi, Roberta (Toulouse School of Economics)
  • Title: Shame, Guilt and Self-Confidence: an Economic Analysis
  • Time: 10:00–11:30
  • Venue: A208
  • Chair: Dr. Li, Xiaoxi
  • Abstract: The evidence from anthropology, psychology and economics shows that sensitivity to the emotion of shame varies across cultures. So does the tendency to exhibit overconfidence. This paper explores the connection between these two observations. It also sheds light on the, related, role of the sensitivity to guilt. Shame and guilt have been portrayed as alternative mechanisms to enforce cooperation. We focus on a key difference between shame and guilt: shame is less sensitive to an individual’s private information, making it a rather blunt instrument, while guilt is more vulnerable to manipulation by the self (e.g. excuses, selective attention, exploiting moral wiggle room…). Shame and guilt influence individual behaviour in a variety of dimensions, including their effect on individuals’ incentives to pursue long-term goals and invest in new projects. Taking this into account, we investigate how reliance on guilt versus shame interacts with a different psychological incentive mechanism: overconfidence. We investigate our model’s predictions using data on differences in self-confidence and in shame and guilt sensitivity across countries, as well as individual-level data on migrants.
• May 24, 2019, Friday
  • Speaker: Li, Sanxi (Professor, Renmin University of China)
  • Title: Sharing Consumers’ Data in Vertically Differentiated Duopoly
  • Time: 15:00–16:30
  • Venue: A208
  • Chair: Han, Lining
  • Abstract: This paper investigates the incentives and effects of competing firms sharing consumers’ personal information in a duopoly market, where two firms sell vertically differentiated products. We derive firms’ pricing strategies and welfares of all parties under different information structures. And we show that only when firm with less competitive advantage has all consumers’ information will sell part of consumers’ personal information to its competitor to maximize the total revenue. The smaller the competitive advantage of the firm, the more personal information of consumers will be sold to their competitors. To maximize the profits of the whole industry and also social welfare, all consumers’ personal information should be owned by the firm with competitive advantage.
• May 9, 2019, Thursday
  • Speaker: Zhang, Jun (Assistant Professor, Nanjing Audit University)
  • Title: Fractional Top Trading Cycle
  • Time: 14:00–15:30
  • Venue: B249
  • Chair: Han, Lining
  • Abstract: We generalize the Top Trading Cycle mechanism to solve random assignment problems. Specifically, we study the fractional endowment exchange problem in which each agent may own fractional amounts of multiple objects and each object may be owned by multiple agents. We propose a class of mechanisms based on a linear programming method. At every step, our mechanisms let agents point to most preferred objects and objects point to all of their owners. We use a linear equation system to describe how to trade the network generated at every step. Interestingly, the equation system is an instance of the classical Leontief input-output model so that its solutions must exist. We provide an intuitive explanation of our mechanisms: at every step, there exist disjoint absorbing sets in the generated network and agents in each absorbing set trade endowments only among themselves. All of our mechanisms are individually rational and sd-efficient. We characterize those mechanisms satisfying desirable fairness properties including equal-endowment no envy and stronger notions. We apply the mechanisms to solve real-life problems including school choice with weak priorities and time bank.

2018

• December 21, 2018, Friday
  • Speaker: Cheng, Chen (Assistant Professor, Johns Hopkins University)
  • Title: Stable Allocations with Network-Based Comparisons
  • Time: 15:30–17:00
  • Venue: A208
  • Chair: Han, Lining
  • Abstract: We consider a model in which an agent’s payoff is based on her (local) ranking, i.e., the ranking of her allocation among her neighbors’ in the network. An allocation is stable if it is not revoked under α-majority voting; that is, there exists no alternative allocation, such that a fraction of at least α of the population have their rankings strictly improved under the alternative. We find a sufficient and necessary condition for a network to permit any stable allocation: the network has an independent set of size at least (1 − α) of the population. A network is more permissive if it permits stable allocation for a larger set of α. We then characterize the size of the largest independent set for Erdős–Rényi random networks, which reflects how permissive a network is: for large enough population, the level of permissibility solely depends on the expected degree. We provide several interesting comparative statics results: more connected networks, more populated networks (with a fixed link probability), or more homophilous networks are less permissive. Given expected degree, whether a network is segregated or integrated would not affect the level of permissibility. We generalize our model to arbitrary blocking coalitions and provide a sufficient and necessary condition for this case. We also extend the model to directed networks.
• December 21, 2018, Friday
  • Speaker: Xing, Yiqing (Assistant Professor, Johns Hopkins University)
  • Title: Screening with Network Externalities
  • Time: 14:00–15:30
  • Venue: A208
  • Chair: Xiao, Mingjun
  • Abstract: We develop a model in which a profit-maximizing monopoly sells a product with positive network externalities and optimally screen buyers’ network information: their susceptibility (out-degree) and influence (in-degree). We characterize the optimal allocation for both the case of directed networks where each buyer’s influence and susceptibility are independent, and the case of undirected networks where the two are identical. In the case of directed networks, we show the optimal allocation can only depend on a buyer’s susceptibility and linear in virtual type (susceptibility) with quadratic intrinsic value. In the case of undirected networks, we disentangle the different effects of influence and susceptibility on optimal allocation and show with quadratic intrinsic value, the allocation is a linear combination of a buyer’s type and virtual type. Then we contrast the model with complete information pricing and pure screening and show that apart from the screening effects, positive network externalities increase each buyer’s allocation at the optimal selling mechanism. We also extend the model to accommodate for weak positive affiliation between a buyer’s influence and susceptibility, and the situation where influence and susceptibility are endogenous to the optimal allocation.
• November 12, 2018, Monday
  • Speaker: He, Wei (Assistant Professor, The Chinese University of Hong Kong)
  • Title: Dynamic Project Assignment
  • Time: 10:30–11:30
  • Venue: A208
  • Chair: Sun, Xiang
  • Abstract: We consider a project assignment problem where a Principal needs to assign multiple projects to a long-lived Agent. The Agent is privately informed about her cost, which evolves stochastically over time. To fully characterize the optimal mechanism, we identify the key trade-off of the Principal, which is the comparison between the benefit from an immediate assignment at high cost and the payoff from a delayed assignment at low cost. We show that the capacity constraint can reduce the payoff of the Principal and create a “hold-up” problem by comparing the limit of the optimal payoffs of the Principal when the capacity constraint is present, with the Principal’s optimal payoff when the capacity constraint is absent.
• October 25, 2018, Thursday
  • Speaker: Wang, Tong (Lecturer, The University of Edinburgh)
  • Title: Economics and Corporate Finance in the World of Blockchain
  • Time: 10:00–11:30
  • Venue: A208
  • Chair: Li, Xiaoxi
  • Abstract: This talk aims to give a brief introduction about the principle and mechanism of blockchain that may be of interest for economists and social scientists. It will also describe a game-theoretical framework of Initial Coin Offering and the points that the regulatory agencies may concern. Finally, some potential research topics with blockchain implementation will be addressed, which make a connection between the theory of corporate finance and the industrial practice.
• September 19, 2018, Wednesday
  • Speaker: Feng, Xin (Assistant Professor, University of International Business and Economics)
  • Title: Information Disclosure in All-pay Auctions with Costly Entry
  • Time: 14:00–15:30
  • Venue: B247
  • Chair: Shen, Bo
  • Abstract: In this paper, we accommodate costly entry of contestants and examine the optimal information disclosure in a two-player all-pay contest. The contest organizer commits to an information policy to disclose the characteristics of the contest prize before contestants make their entry decisions. With free entry, we show that full concealment always induces higher aggregate effort than full disclosure policy, due to the property of “full rent dissipation”.However, by taking into account costly entry, full disclosure could dominate full concealment policy by attracting contestants. entries.We further consider random disclosure and identify the optimal degree of transparency. Depending on the range of entry cost, full disclosure, full concealment, and random disclosure policies could be optimal. In particular, it is ex ante optimal for the contest organizer to commit to a more transparent information policy as the entry cost rises. Our results indicate that entry incentive plays a crucial role in the design of information disclosure.
• September 3, 2018, Monday
  • Speaker: Wang, Yun (Assistant Professor, Xiamen University) and Lee, Jong Jae (Assistant Professor, Wuhan University)
  • Title: Bayesian Persuasion: Theory and Applications
  • Time: 09:00–12:00
  • Venue: B247
  • Chair: Li, Xiaoxi
  • Abstract: This mini course covers several topics on Bayesian persuasion theory and its applications. In the main part of this lecture, Prof. Yun Wang first presents the basic model of Bayesian persuasion à la Kamenica and Gentzkow (AER 2011) and then talks about the extension to the situations of multiple receivers and of privately informed receivers. At the end, Prof. Jong Jae Lee discusses an application of the Bayesian persuasion model to the advertising problems in the marketing science.
• June 28, 2018, Thursday
  • Speaker: Xu, Zibo (Assistant Professor, Singapore University of Technology and Design)
  • Title: Stability of Settled Equilibria
  • Time: 10:00–11:30
  • Venue: B249
  • Chair: Li, Xiaoxi
  • Abstract: This paper defines a rationally tenable block and a rationally settled equilibrium in a symmetric game. Examples and properties for evolutionary stability are shown.
• May 17, 2018, Thursday
  • Speaker: Liu, Bin (Assistant Professor, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen)
  • Title: Sequential Screening with Hidden Actions
  • Time: 14:00–15:30
  • Venue: B226
  • Chair: Sun, Xiang
  • Abstract: One common insight in the sequential screening literature (e.g., Courty and Li, 2000, and Eső and Szentes, 2007) is that the allocation (implemented in the second stage) is in general discriminatory over the first stage types. In this paper, we study how introducing a first-stage type-enhancing hidden action of the agent would affect the degree of discrimination at the optimum in a two-stage procurement setting where the agent can make costly unobservable investment to improve his first stage type, which is the distribution of his second-stage realized private cost of delivering the product. The principal’s goal is to minimize the expected procurement cost. We find that the introduction of moral hazard unambiguously mitigates the allocative discrimination in the second stage. In particular, the second stage mechanism can even be non-discriminatory when the marginal cost of investment is small enough.
• April 26, 2018, Thursday
  • Speaker: Cao, Zhigang (Professor, Beijing Jiaotong University)
  • Title: A network game of dynamic traffic
  • Time: 14:00–15:30
  • Venue: B226
  • Chair: Sun, Xiang
  • Abstract: We study a network congestion game of discrete-time dynamic traffic of atomic agents with a single origin-destination pair. Any agent freely makes a dynamic decision at each vertex (e.g., road crossing) and traffic is regulated with given priorities on edges (e.g., road segments). We first constructively prove that there always exists a sub-game perfect equilibrium (SPE) in this game. We then study the relationship between this model and a simplified model, in which agents select and fix an origin-destination path simultaneously. We show that the set of Nash equilibrium (NE) flows of the simplified model is a proper subset of the set of SPE flows of our main model. We prove that each NE is also a strong NE and hence weakly Pareto optimal. We establish several other nice properties of NE flows, including global First-In-First-Out. Then for two classes of networks, including series-parallel ones, we show that the queue lengths at equilibrium are bounded at any given instance, which means the price of anarchy of any given game instance is bounded, provided that the inflow size never exceeds the network capacity. (joint work with Bo Chen, Xujin Chen, and Changjun Wang)
• April 24, 2018, Tuesday
  • Speaker: Zhou, Junjie (Assistant Professor, National University of Singapore)
  • Title: Coordination on Networks
  • Time: 13:00–14:30
  • Venue: B226
  • Chair: Sun, Xiang
  • Abstract: We study a coordination game among agents on a network, who choose whether or not to take an action that yields value increasing in the actions of neighbors. In a standard global game setting, players receive noisy information of the technology’s common state-dependent value. We show the existence and uniqueness of a pure equilibrium in the noiseless limit. We derive limiting cutoffs, which allocate players into coordination sets, within members take a common cutoff strategy and are path connected. We provide necessary and sufficient conditions for agents to inhabit the same coordination set. The strategic effects of perturbations to players’ underlining values are shown to spread throughout but be contained within the perturbed players’ coordination sets. Welfare properties are investigated.

2017

• May 8, 2017, Monday
  • Speaker: Tang, Qianfeng (Associate Professor, Shanghai University of Finance and Economics)
  • Title: Weak stability and Pareto efficiency in school choice
  • Time: 15:30–17:00
  • Venue: B127
  • Chair: Sun, Xiang
  • Abstract: We propose a new notion of weak stability for two-sided matching problems. A matching is said to be weakly stable if matching any of its blocking pairs inevitably creates new blocking pairs. We then apply this concept to school choice and study its compatibility with the Pareto efficiency of students’ welfare. Our main result shows that if a matching Pareto dominates the student-optimal stable matching for the students, then it is weakly stable if and only if it is more stable than the outcome of Kesten’s efficiency-adjusted deferred acceptance mechanism (EADAM) for some consenting constraint. We also provide a test for weak stability by showing that a matching is weakly stable if and only if it is as stable as the EADAM outcome which uses its set of blocking pairs as the consenting constraint.
• April 10, 2017, Monday
  • Speaker: Zheng, Jie (Assistant Professor, Tsinghua University)
  • Title: Multi-period Matching with Commitment
  • Time: 15:30–17:00
  • Venue: B127
  • Chair: Sun, Xiang
  • Abstract: Many multi-period matching markets exhibit some level of commitment. That is, agents’ ability to terminate an existing relationship may be restricted by cost of breakups, binding contracts or social norms. This paper models matching markets with three types of commitment, defines corresponding notions of stability and examines the existence of stable mechanisms, as well as specifies sufficient conditions for efficiency, strategy-proofness and other properties. Firstly, the market with full commitment most closely resembles the static matching market, where most of the results, such as existence of stability, hold in the most general class of preferences. However, there is no dynamically stable spot rule, which only depends on spot markets, unless agents are extremely impatient. Secondly, for the models with two-sided commitment or one-sided commitment, desirable properties that are valid under the setup with a fixed set of individuals may not hold when arrivals and departures are introduced, and three approaches are proposed to deal with this issue. Whenever a dynamically stable matching exists, we construct an algorithm building upon the Deferred Acceptance algorithm of Gale and Shapley (1962) to characterize such a matching outcome. Moreover, as extensions, we discuss the case with no commitment and conduct welfare comparisons among cases with different types of commitment.
• March 30, 2017, Thursday
  • Speaker: Wang, Zhewei (Professor, Shandong University)
  • Title: Multi-dimensional All-pay Contests
  • Time: 15:30–17:00
  • Venue: B247
  • Chair: Sun, Xiang
  • Abstract: Multi-dimensional contests refer to situations where players compete by exerting efforts in multiple dimension, which is commonplace in the real world. In a two-player two-dimension all-pay contest model, we derive and compare the optimal grand multi-dimensional contest and the optimal separate single-dimensional contests. We find that the former is preferred/indifferent to the latter for the contest designer when her payoff function takes a multiplicative/additive form. Intuitively, when the payoff function takes a multiplicative form, effort level in one dimension has an externality effect to the effectiveness of effort making in another dimension. In a grand two-dimensional contest each player bids efforts in two dimensions cooperatively where the externality effect is taken into consideration.
• March 23, 2017, Thursday
  • Speaker: Zhang, Wenzhang (tenured Associate Professor, Shanghai University of Finance and Economics)
  • Title: Self-Evident Events and the Value of Linking
  • Time: 13:00–14:30
  • Venue: B251
  • Chair: Sun, Xiang
  • Abstract: We propose a theory of linking in long-term relationships that is based on the notion of self-evident event, which describes what becomes “public” at the end of a stage game where players observe both public and private information. We obtain a tight bound on the average per-period efficiency loss that must be incurred to enforce a stage-game outcome throughout a T-period repeated game when T is large. Our results apply to all monitoring structures and strategy profiles. They explain the inefficiency result in Abreu, Milgrom, and Pearce (1991), as well as the approximate-efficiency results in Compte (1998), Obara (2009), and Chan and Zhang (2016).
• March 20, 2017, Monday
  • Speaker: Yang, Ming (Assistant Professor, Duke University)
  • Title: Coordination and Continuous Choice
  • Time: 10:00–10:30
  • Venue: B127
  • Chair: Sun, Xiang
  • Abstract: We study a coordination game where players choose what information to acquire about payoffs prior to the play of the game. We allow general information acquisition technologies, modeled by a cost functional defined on information structures. A cost functional satisfies continuous choice if players choose a continuous decision rule even in a decision problem with discontinuous payoffs. If continuous choice holds, there is a unique equilibrium; if it fails, there are multiple equilibria. We show how continuous choice captures the idea that it is sufficiently harder to distinguish states that are close to each other relative to far away states.
• March 9, 2017, Thursday
  • Speaker: Sun, Yifei (Assistant Professor, University of International Business and Economics)
  • Title: Maskin Meets Abreu and Matsushima
  • Time: 15:30–17:00
  • Venue: B127
  • Chair: Sun, Xiang
  • Abstract: Maskin (1977, 1999) proposes a well known monotonicity condition, which we refer to as Maskin monotonicity and shows it to be necessary and almost sufficient for Nash implementation. Although many implementation results using refinements of Nash equilibrium can dispense with Maskin monotonicity, a recent development in the literature shows that if we were to make implementation robust to information perturbations, Maskin monotonicity would come back as a necessary condition. Looking at environments with monetary transfers and quasiliner preferences, we show that Maskin monotonicity is not only necessary but sufficient for Nash implementation by finite mechanisms. It is easy to see that finite mechanisms are robust to information perturbations. To obtain this result, we construct a novel finite mechanism that exploits the notion of dictator lotteries of Abreu and Matsushima (1992) and we apply it to Nash implementation. Our mechanism does not use the integer games or anything alike and takes care of mixed strategies explicitly. We also extend our result to the case of social choice correspondences, two agents, and rationalizable implementation of social choice functions.

2016

• November 18, 2016
  • Speaker: Huangfu, Bingchao (Assistant Professor, Zhongnan University of Economics and Law)
  • Topic: A Tale of Two Lemons: Multi-good Dynamic Adverse Selection
  • Time: 13:30–15:00
  • Venue: B129
  • Chair: Chen, Bo
  • Abstract: This paper studies the role of cross-market information spillovers in a multi-good dynamic bargaining problem with interdependent values. More precisely, in an environment where a seller has two heterogeneous goods for sale in two markets and is better informed than the potential buyers about the qualities of the goods, we investigate how the information revealed through (non-)trade of one good affects the probability of trade of the other good, and its consequences to the trading dynamics and patterns of specialization. Our main finding is that when the qualities of the two goods are sufficiently negatively correlated and the seller is patient, then even if adverse selection precludes first-best efficiency for both goods, it is mitigated as sequential trade occurs quickly through the seller’s endogenous signaling motive, as long as buyers in one market observe the (non-)trading outcome in the other market. As a consequence, sellers have an incentive to specialize in one of the two goods before playing the bargaining game with the buyers, in such a way to endogenously generate the required negative correlation between the qualities of the two goods. In contrast, without such cross-market observability and subsequent specialization, i.e., endogenous negative correlation, there is either bargaining delay or impasse in both markets as in the standard dynamic adverse selection problem.
• November 3, 2016
  • Speaker: Wu, Jiemai (Assistant Professor, The University of Sydney)
  • Topic: Beneficially Imperfect Persuaders
  • Time: 10:00–11:30
  • Venue: B129
  • Abstract: When a decision maker’s (DM’s) choice depends on the information provided by persuaders, does the DM benefit from that information? I address this question in the context of a Bayesian persuasion game in which independent persuaders with no private information try to persuade a DM by gathering information using verifiable tests. All persuaders want the DM to switch her action from a default action to a new action, but whether the DM also finds it optimal to switch depends on the state of the world. The persuaders strategically design tests that may be biased towards the new action and that best respond to the test designs of the other persuaders. I show that although the DM never benefits when there is only one persuader, there always exist strict equilibria with high payoffs for the DM when there is more than one persuader, even if the persuaders have perfectly aligned incentives. Moreover, in these equilibria, persuaders choose noisy tests that sometimes misreport their desired state as the undesired one.
• September 28, 2016
  • Speaker: Zhao, Xiaojian (Assistant Professor, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology)
  • Topic: Incentive-Compatibility in Financial Contracting with Limited Liability
  • Time: 10:00–11:30
  • Venue: B247
  • Abstract: In the presence of limited liability, the incentive compatibility constraints in financial contracting models with asymmetric information are weaker than assumed in much of the literature. In this paper, we identify the problem that has been overlooked in the literature and provide a rigorous proof of optimality of debt contracts under fairly general assumptions.
• June 6, 2016
  • Speaker: Qu, Xiangyu (University of Paris 2)
  • Topic: Bayesian Aggregation with Heterogenous Beliefs and Values
  • Time: 14:30–16:00
  • Venue: B127
  • Abstract: Bayesian theory for individual decision making under uncertainty prescribes that individuals posit a utility function, a probability over events and evaluate each act on the basis of its expected utility. We attempt to generalize the model to social decision making. The aggregation rules we consider are both society’s belief and values are the affine aggregation of individuals beliefs and values, respectively. It is well-known that standard Pareto condition is not compatible with separate aggregation. Two natural extended Pareto condition are suggested. We show that Invariant Pareto condition is equivalent to separate aggregation under Anscome-Aumann setting and Hedging Pareto condition is equivalent to separate aggregation under Savage setting.

2015

• December 10, 2015
  • Speaker: Chen, Yu (Assistant Professor, Nanjing University)
  • Topic: Existence of Optimal Contracts with the Inclusion of Observable Actions in Generalized Moral Hazard Problems
  • Time: 15:00–16:30
  • Venue: B127
  • Abstract: We provide a generalized model concerning the one-shot pure-strategy moral hazard contracting game with the inclusion of observable actions as well as unobservable actions. The outcome, action, and reward spaces are assumed to be all metrizable and compact and allowed to be uncountable and multi-dimensional. We find that employing observable-action-and-outcome-contingent contracts is strategically equivalent to employing pure outcome-contingent contracts, as long as the principal can specify and enforce individual rational observable actions to the agent. The space of feasible contracts is assumed to be (sequentially) closed under the topology of point-wise convergence. We do not need any other a priori technical assumptions on the contract function space. We then propose conditions under which the solution to such a principal-agent problem exists.
• October 30, 2015
  • Speaker: Xiao, Mingjun (Assistant Professor, Wuhan University)
  • Topic: Mechanism Design with Interdependent Valuations and Semi-exclusive SignalsMechanism Design with Interdependent Valuations and Semi-exclusive Signals
  • Time: 14:00–15:30
  • Venue: B127
  • Abstract: This paper approaches the classic implementation problem with interdependent valuations in a new way. Instead of exploring conditions on preferences, we introduce a semi-exclusive information structure that can help implement efficient or inefficient social choice rule in generic environments. Semi-exclusive information allows agents to observe noisy signals about their opponents’ payoff types. This piece of information can provide a tool for the designer to verify other agents’ private information. Thanks to this tool, we could restore the implementation of efficiency that would not have been possible following the routine method of finding global or local sorting conditions. We study generic environments that include settings with preferences not satisfying “single crossing conditions,” or other similar sorting conditions. The role of semi-exclusive signal is targeted to align the incentive constraints. We explore the implementability of efficient rule and other properly specified rules both when this information structure is static and when it is dynamic. While both setups can implement general allocation rules, the static setting sheds light on Crémer and McLean (1985,1988)’s utilization of correlation and the dynamic setting steps away from Crémer and McLean’s world and explores the correlation after the allocation decisions.
• May 21, 2015
  • Speaker: Zhang, Yongchao (Associate Professor, Shanghai University of Finance and Economics)
  • Topic: On Pure-strategy Equilibria in Games with Correlated Information
  • Time: 15:30–17:00
  • Venue: B226
  • Chair: Sun, Xiang
  • Abstract: Aumann (1974) showed that the set of independent objective pure-strategy equilibrium payoffs of a suitably formulated correlated information game coincides with the set of mixed-strategy Nash equilibrium payoffs of the original complete information game. A decisive example of Radner-Rosenthal (1982) questioned the hypothesis of this result. In this paper, we address the criticism, and in resolution, establish the existence of pure-strategy Bayesian-Nash equilibrium in a class of correlated information games. We also show that a saturated information structure is necessary to guarantee the existence of equilibrium in a small class of such games.
• April 14, 2015
  • Speaker: Zhou, Junjie (Associate Professor, Shanghai University of Finance and Economics)
  • Topic: Competitive Multi-sided Platforms
  • Time: 15:30–17:00
  • Venue: B127
  • ​Chair: Sun, Xiang
  • Abstract: This paper provides a model of competition with an arbitrary number of platforms with multi sides. We show the existence and uniqueness of equilibrium prices for any degree of externality among different sides. Under symmetry condition, the equilibrium price for each side can be conveniently decomposed into three parts: cost, premium due to product differentiation, and discount due to cross subsidies. We also explore some comparative statics and investigate the effect of mergers on prices, consumer welfare, firm profit etc.

2014

• December 25, 2014
  • Speaker: Rong, Kang (Associate Professor, Shanghai University of Finance and Economics)
  • Topic: Public Good Provision with Voting
  • Time: 15:30–17:00
  • Venue: B129
  • Chair: Sun, Xiang
  • Abstract: This paper studies the public good provision problem, in which a public good provision mechanism can be enforced among a group of agents only if the mechanism can be approved by the agents under a prespecified alpha majority rule. We find that as long as the voting rule is not the unanimity rule, then the first-best efficient level of the public good can be achieved even when the economy is large.
• October 30, 2014, Thursday
  • Speaker: Xu, Jin (Assistant Professor, Huazhong University of Science and Technology)
  • Topic: Enriching Multi-round Tournament Theory
  • Time: 15:30–17:00
  • Venus: B249
  • Chair: Sun, Xiang
  • Abstract: Empirical organization research has documented convex wage structures for hierarchical firms. We investigate two realistic extensions to Rosen (1986)’s multi-round promotion tournament model, which may separately generate convex wage structures. The first extension, the number of workers competing rises with the hierarchical level, can lead to a convex wage structure. The second extension, the returns of effort increase with the hierarchical level, cannot generate a convex wage structure unless we add further assumptions concerning the production uncertainty and the cost function of effort.
• October 17, 2014, Friday
  • Speaker: Gong, Qiang (Professor, Southwestern University of Finance and Economics)
  • Topic: 技术创新、股权融资与金融结构转型
  • Time: 10:00–11:30
  • Venue: B127
  • Abstract: 金融体系能否有效支持技术创新，是中国经济转型与产业升级的关键。本文分析了银行贷款和股权融资支持技术创新的不同机制。为技术创新型企业融资存在两种风险：企业的信用风险和创新的不确定性。银行通过资产抵押、违约清算等监管，能够有效克服信用风险，但对于缺乏抵押且不确定性较高的创新企业，银行贷款的回报与承担的风险不相匹配，导致银行缺少激励为创新企业融资。而股权融资中，创新企业能够以新技术新产品的潜在高额回报吸引投资者，企业创新的资金需求和投资者追求高回报、承担高风险的激励相一致，创新企业通过股权融资往往更易获得资金。然而，股权融资的长期性和资金使用的信息不对称，为不法企业攫取股东利益提供了可能，优质的创新企业只有在严格的法律和金融监管制度下，才能获得投资者的充分信任，企业对股权融资的需求才能得到充分满足。本文表明，依靠当前我国银行主导的金融结构，技术创新较难得到有效的金融支持；而发挥股权融资市场对技术创新的重要作用，必须为投资者保护提供优良的制度环境。研究进一步发现，政府对技术创新进行金融扶持时，直接为企业提供研发资助，比为金融机构提供风险投资担保更具效率。
• September 29, 2014, Monday
  • Speaker: Li, Mengling (PhD candidate, Nanyang Technology University)
  • Topic: Two-sided many-to-many matching with ties
  • Time: 10:00–11:30
  • Venue: B127
  • Chair: Wei, Lijia
  • Abstract: This paper studies a generalized many-to-many matching problem with ties. When ties are allowed in preferences, a stable outcome needs not be Pareto efficient, resulting in efficiency loss. In such problems, a natural solution concept is Pareto stability, which ensures both stability and Pareto efficiency. Our main technical contribution is a polynomial-time algorithm that computes a Pareto stable many-to-many matching in the presence of ties. For a less generalized problem with homogenous preferences on one side of the market, for example, course allocation with ties, we propose two new competing Pareto stable mechanisms known as Pareto-improving draft and dictatorship mechanisms. Using actual data, our simulations show that both mechanisms can significantly improve overall efficiency and welfare of students when compared with the existing mechanism. Besides, the draft mechanism outperforms the dictatorship mechanism despite its non-strategy proof for the students.
• April 17, 2014
  • Speaker: Sun, Ning (Professor, Shanghai University of Finance and Economics)
  • Title: Hybrid mechanisms for car licenses allocation with budget constraints
  • Time: 09:30–11:00
  • Venue: B127
  • Chair: Wei, Lijia
  • Abstract: In this paper, we use a multi-unit auction model to describe the car licenses allocation problem in China, where buyers are assumed to be of unit demand and hold budget constraints. When designing a car licenses allocation mechanism, the social planner is assumed to consider three factors: efficiency, revenue, and equality. We give a modified Gini coefficient to measure the equality of an allocation mechanism. We then propose a kind of Hybrid Mechanisms for car licenses allocation incorporating auction and lottery, and discuss bidders’ relative strategies. By numerically computing the expressions of efficiency, equality and revenue under the assumption of continuum-mass agents and licenses, we present the performance of the hybrid mechanism with different parameters. Simulations under the assumption of discrete number of agents and licenses are also run to check the robustness of the results of continuum-mass cases. We further describe the Probabilistic Allocation Mechanism and Auctions with price ceilings and compare them with the Hybrid Mechanisms.