Hans GersbachMatthew O. JacksonPhilippe MullerOriol Tejada...
105716.1-105716.28页
查看更多>>摘要:We analyze two-party electoral competition with a one-dimensional policy space, costly policy changes, and random negative shocks to a party's viability over an infinite horizon. We show the existence and uniqueness of stationary Markov perfect equilibria in which parties use so-called simple strategies. Regardless of the initial policy, party choices converge in the long run to a stochastic alternation between two policies, with transitions occurring if and only if parties suffer a negative shock to their viability. Although costs of change have a moderating effect on policies, full convergence to the median voter position does not take place when parties are polarized.
查看更多>>摘要:We examine the subjective value of gaining knowledge in a version of Savage's model for decisions under uncertainty in which the received outcome provides information about which event has obtained. Decision makers commonly value such knowledge either because they want to use it in future decisions or because they are personally interested in it. We find that in our model, the sure-thing principle and several other axioms of Savage are inconsistent with this value for knowledge about events. We provide a representation theorem for a subjective value of knowledge consisting of the sum of expected utility and a function of the information partition generated by the outcomes of an act. We characterize when the value of knowledge can be represented by a subjective value of knowledge about an information partition plus a Shannon entropy cost of processing information. Our results also provide a novel critique of the necessity of Savage's axioms for rational decisions under uncertainty.
查看更多>>摘要:Motivated by epidemics such as COVID-19, we study the spread of a contagious disease when behavior responds to the disease's prevalence. We extend the SIR epidemiological model to include endogenous meeting rates. Individuals benefit from economic activity, but activity involves interactions with potentially infected individuals. The main focus is a theoretical analysis of contagion dynamics and behavioral responses to changes in risk. We obtain a simple condition for when public-health interventions or variants of a disease will have paradoxical effects on infection rates due to risk compensation. Behavioral responses are most likely to undermine public-health interventions near the peak of severe diseases.
查看更多>>摘要:Why do firms engage in costly, voluntary disclosure of information which is subsumed by a later announcement? We consider a model in which the firm's manager can choose to disclose short-term information which becomes redundant later. When disclosure costs are sufficiently low, the manager discloses even if she only cares about the long-term price of the firm. Intuitively, by disclosing, she causes early investors to trade less aggressively, reducing price informativeness, which in turn increases information acquisition by late investors. The subsequent increase in acquisition more than offsets the initial decrease in price informativeness and, consequently, improves long term prices.
查看更多>>摘要:Fiscal-backed money can provide additional liquidity to consumers and mitigate the liquidity shortage problem in an economy with banks where agents face idiosyncratic liquidity shocks without being fully insured. The government issues fiat money and creates real value for money by levying a tax and accepting money for tax payments. Tax reallocates the distribution of liquidity in the economy. An increase in tax, by increasing fiscal surplus and the real value of money, reduces the equilibrium investment. Additionally, imposing taxes influences the incentive of private information production, which may impose a constraint on optimal fiscal policy.
查看更多>>摘要:Standard rational expectations models with an occasionally binding zero lower bound constraint either admit no solutions (incoherence) or multiple solutions (incompleteness). This paper shows that deviations from full-information rational expectations mitigate concerns about incoherence and incompleteness. Models with no rational expectations equilibria admit self-confirming equilibria involving the use of simple mis-specified forecasting models. Completeness and coherence are restored if expectations are adaptive or if agents are less forward-looking due to some information or behavioral friction. In the case of incompleteness, the E-stability criterion selects an equilibrium.
查看更多>>摘要:We study the interplay between information acquisition and signaling. A sender decides whether to learn his type at a cost prior to taking a signaling action. A receiver observes the signaling action and responds. We characterize equilibria and apply a version of never a weak best response refinement in the environment where the information acquisition is observable as well as in the environment where it is covert. Covert information acquisition always leads to information acquisition when information is cheap. Observable information acquisition, on the other hand, does not necessarily.
查看更多>>摘要:We study the market for a risky asset in which traders are heterogeneous both in terms of their value for the asset and the information that they have about this value. Traders behave strategically and use the equilibrium price to extract information that is relevant to them. Due to adverse selection, uninformed traders are less willing than the informed to provide liquidity. We evaluate the impact of a change in the size or composition of the investor population on price informativeness, liquidity and welfare, with applications to the rise of passive investing and the adoption of ESG standards.
查看更多>>摘要:We study how people form networks through introductions. We consider a model where players with different ability levels are connected in a network. The players seek to match with someone they are linked to in the network (i.e., their neighbors), and they prefer high-ability neighbors over low-ability ones. We investigate whether a player will strategically introduce two unacquainted neighbors to each other to improve her own matching outcome. We find that this is possible if (ⅰ) the player making the introduction is less capable than both of the neighbors she considers introducing, and (ⅱ) there exists an even-length alternating path-a sequence of linked players that alternate between matching and not matching with the next player on the sequence-from one of the neighbors to the introducer. The characterization based on alternating paths arises because an introduction can trigger a chain of rematches along these paths. Then, we characterize stable networks and efficient networks, and we show that stability and efficiency do not imply each other. Finally, we consider several extensions, such as alternative matching processes and incomplete information.
查看更多>>摘要:We consider the canonical frequent-offer Rubinstein bargaining game between two leaders on a policy issue. The public sentiment on this issue leans toward one leader or the other. Public sentiment determines the maximum compromise a leader can make without risking getting primaried. We introduce a positive probability e that the leaders are uninformed about the sentiment. We show that a unique equilibrium emerges that resembles a war of attrition, in which one of the leaders may demand too much even after learning that the sentiment leans the other way. For a given bargaining environment, as e converges to zero, in every state, the leaders almost immediately agree to the same policy position as they do under complete information. However, this convergence does not hold in the uniform sense, nor does it necessarily hold for more than two states.