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Essays in Strategic Information Provision
Senkov, Maxim ; Zápal, Jan (advisor) ; Ivanov, Maxim (referee) ; Matysková, Ludmila (referee)
In the first chapter, we show that a biased principal can strictly benefit from hiring an agent with misaligned preferences or beliefs. We consider a ``delegated expertise'' problem in which the agent has an advantage in acquiring information relative to the principal. We show that it is optimal for a principal who is ex ante biased towards one action to select an agent who is less biased. Such an agent is more uncertain ex ante about what the best course of action is and would acquire more information. The benefit to the principal of a better-informed decision always outweighs the cost of a small misalignment. In the second chapter, I study a game between an agent and a principal in a dynamic information design framework. A principal funds a multistage project and retains the right to cut the funding if it stagnates at some point. An agent wants to convince the principal to fund the project as long as possible, and can design the flow of information about the progress of the project in order to persuade the principal. If the project is sufficiently promising ex ante, then the agent commits to providing only the good news that the project is accomplished. If the project is not promising enough ex ante, the agent persuades the principal to start the funding by committing to provide not only good...
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Essays on Information Economics
Matysková, Ludmila ; Steiner, Jakub (advisor) ; Kamenica, Emir (referee) ; Dean, Mark (referee)
In the first chapter, we study the effect on the economy of platforms for online consumer reviews. Consumer reviews may have perverse effects, including delays in the adoption of new products of unknown quality when consumers are boundedly rational. When consumers fail to take into account that past reviewers self-select into purchases, a monopolist may manipulate the posterior beliefs of consumers who observe the reviews, because the product price determines the self-selection bias. The monopolist will charge a relatively high price because the positive selection of the early adopters increases the quality reported in the reviews. In the second chapter, we study a game between a sender and a receiver in a framework of Bayesian persuasion. A sender choosing a signal to be disclosed to a receiver can often influence the receiver's actions. Is persuasion more difficult when the receiver has additional information sources? Does the receiver benefit from having the additional sources? We extend a Bayesian persuasion model to a receiver's acquisition of costly information. The game can be solved as a standard Bayesian persuasion model under an additional constraint: the receiver never gathers her own costly information. The `threat' of learning hurts the sender. However, the resulting outcome can also...
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Experimental Testing of Game-Theoretic Predictions: The Ultimatum Game
Matysková, Ludmila ; Gregor, Martin (advisor) ; Melikhova, Oksana (referee)
This thesis focuses on testing of game theoretical predictions in the ultimatum game by means of controlled experiments. This game has become one of the most scrutinized games from the area of bargaining game theory. The theoretical division of the reward, which the players bargain over, is such that one player gets virtually all the reward while the second player is left with nothing. Because of such an extreme division of the reward, the game represents a severe test for the theory. In fact, experimental results do not confirm to the theory. This thesis provides a survey of the experimental studies investigating different aspects that may affect the subjects' behavior in the game. Furthermore, some possible explanations for why the theoretical solution is not observed to be played by the subjects in the laboratory are presented. I show several new models, which try to capture the real nature of the subjects' behavior in the game. I also focus on the proposers' behavior from the income-maximizing point of view if the distribution of the responder's minimum acceptance thresholds is known to them. Outline of a new experiment examining such behavior is then presented.
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Numerical Modelling of Two-Prize Asymmetric Contests
Matysková, Ludmila ; Gregor, Martin (advisor) ; Cingl, Lubomír (referee)
This thesis presents an analysis on a class of asymmetric imperfectly discrim- inating multi-prize contests with the aim to investigate when more than one prize becomes optimal prize allocation if the average effort is to be maximized. We present n-person model with heterogeneous contestants who compete for two, possibly different, prizes. The contestants may differ in their relative abil- ities, i.e., parameters affecting their probabilities to win either of the prizes. Two different numerical methods for finding pure strategy Nash equilibria are employed. Depending on particular distributions of the abilities, we find two possible scenarios when the second prize becomes optimal. Furthermore, we ad- dress an issue of existence and uniqueness of a pure strategy Nash equilibrium with respect to the returns to scale in effort parameter. JEL Classification C63, D72 Keywords Imperfectly discriminating contests; Heteroge- neous abilities; Multiple prizes; Numerical meth- ods Author's e-mail lida.matyskova@centrum.cz Supervisor's e-mail gregor@fsv.cuni.cz
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Essays on Information Economics
Matysková, Ludmila ; Steiner, Jakub (advisor) ; Kamenica, Emir (referee) ; Dean, Mark (referee)
In the first chapter, we study the effect on the economy of platforms for online consumer reviews. Consumer reviews may have perverse effects, including delays in the adoption of new products of unknown quality when consumers are boundedly rational. When consumers fail to take into account that past reviewers self-select into purchases, a monopolist may manipulate the posterior beliefs of consumers who observe the reviews, because the product price determines the self-selection bias. The monopolist will charge a relatively high price because the positive selection of the early adopters increases the quality reported in the reviews. In the second chapter, we study a game between a sender and a receiver in a framework of Bayesian persuasion. A sender choosing a signal to be disclosed to a receiver can often influence the receiver's actions. Is persuasion more difficult when the receiver has additional information sources? Does the receiver benefit from having the additional sources? We extend a Bayesian persuasion model to a receiver's acquisition of costly information. The game can be solved as a standard Bayesian persuasion model under an additional constraint: the receiver never gathers her own costly information. The `threat' of learning hurts the sender. However, the resulting outcome can also...
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Bayesian persuasion with costly information acquisition
Matysková, Ludmila
A sender who chooses a signal to reveal to a receiver can often influence the receiver’s subsequent actions. Is persuasion more difficult when the receiver has her own sources of information? Does the receiver benefit from having additional information sources? We consider a Bayesian persuasion model extended to a receiver’s endogenous acquisition of information under an entropy-based cost commonly used in rational inattention. A sender’s optimal signal can be computed from standard Bayesian persuasion subject to an additional constraint: the receiver never gathers her own costly information. We further determine a finite set of the sender’s signals satisfying the additional constraint in which some optimal signal must be contained. The set is characterized by linear conditions using the receiver’s utility and information cost parameters. The new method is also applicable to a standard Bayesian persuasion model and can simplify, sometimes dramatically, the search for a sender’s optimal signal (as opposed to a standard concavification technique used to solve these models). We show that the ‘threat’ of additional learning weakly decreases the sender’s expected equilibrium payoff. However, the outcome can be worse not only for the sender, but also for the receiver.\n \n
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Numerical Modelling of Two-Prize Asymmetric Contests
Matysková, Ludmila ; Gregor, Martin (advisor) ; Cingl, Lubomír (referee)
This thesis presents an analysis on a class of asymmetric imperfectly discrim- inating multi-prize contests with the aim to investigate when more than one prize becomes optimal prize allocation if the average effort is to be maximized. We present n-person model with heterogeneous contestants who compete for two, possibly different, prizes. The contestants may differ in their relative abil- ities, i.e., parameters affecting their probabilities to win either of the prizes. Two different numerical methods for finding pure strategy Nash equilibria are employed. Depending on particular distributions of the abilities, we find two possible scenarios when the second prize becomes optimal. Furthermore, we ad- dress an issue of existence and uniqueness of a pure strategy Nash equilibrium with respect to the returns to scale in effort parameter. JEL Classification C63, D72 Keywords Imperfectly discriminating contests; Heteroge- neous abilities; Multiple prizes; Numerical meth- ods Author's e-mail lida.matyskova@centrum.cz Supervisor's e-mail gregor@fsv.cuni.cz
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Numerical Modelling of Two-Prize Asymmetric Contests
Matysková, Ludmila ; Gregor, Martin (advisor) ; Cingl, Lubomír (referee)
This thesis presents an analysis on a class of asymmetric imperfectly discrim- inating multi-prize contests with the aim to investigate when more than one prize becomes optimal prize allocation if the average effort is to be maximized. We present n-person model with heterogeneous contestants who compete for two, possibly different, prizes. The contestants may differ in their relative abil- ities, i.e., parameters affecting their probabilities to win either of the prizes. Two different numerical methods for finding pure strategy Nash equilibria are employed. Depending on particular distributions of the abilities, we find two possible scenarios when the second prize becomes optimal. Furthermore, we ad- dress an issue of existence and uniqueness of a pure strategy Nash equilibrium with respect to the returns to scale in effort parameter. JEL Classification C63, D72 Keywords Imperfectly discriminating contests; Heteroge- neous abilities; Multiple prizes; Numerical meth- ods Author's e-mail lida.matyskova@centrum.cz Supervisor's e-mail gregor@fsv.cuni.cz
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Experimental Testing of Game-Theoretic Predictions: The Ultimatum Game
Matysková, Ludmila ; Gregor, Martin (advisor) ; Melikhova, Oksana (referee)
This thesis focuses on testing of game theoretical predictions in the ultimatum game by means of controlled experiments. This game has become one of the most scrutinized games from the area of bargaining game theory. The theoretical division of the reward, which the players bargain over, is such that one player gets virtually all the reward while the second player is left with nothing. Because of such an extreme division of the reward, the game represents a severe test for the theory. In fact, experimental results do not confirm to the theory. This thesis provides a survey of the experimental studies investigating different aspects that may affect the subjects' behavior in the game. Furthermore, some possible explanations for why the theoretical solution is not observed to be played by the subjects in the laboratory are presented. I show several new models, which try to capture the real nature of the subjects' behavior in the game. I also focus on the proposers' behavior from the income-maximizing point of view if the distribution of the responder's minimum acceptance thresholds is known to them. Outline of a new experiment examining such behavior is then presented.
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