Theoretical and Experimental Research on Games of Incomplete Information: Applications to Voting and Bargaining

不完全信息博弈的理论与实验研究：在投票和谈判中的应用

• 批准号: 0617820
• 负责人: Thomas Palfrey
• 金额: $ 32.47万
• 依托单位: California Institute of Technology
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2006
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2006-09-01 至 2010-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0617820&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Theoretical; Experimental; Research; Games; Incomplete

This project studies strategic voting and committee bargaining mechanisms under conditions of incomplete information from both theoretical and experimental perspectives. Many questions remain unresolved about the general theoretical problem of designing optimal voting mechanisms to efficiently aggregate preferences and information, without explicit side payments, and also about actual behavior under such mechanisms. By combining theoretical and experimental perspectives, the proposed research will make progress with respect to both intellectual challenges. Theoretically, there are questions of the relative performance of different voting mechanisms, where performance can be evaluated relative to several different objectives, including economic efficiency, informational efficiency, and equity.The proposed research approaches voting behavior from a mechanism design perspective, and compares the performance of different voting mechanisms in different kinds of environments, both dynamic and static. Part of the proposed research involves studying new voting mechanisms that allow voters to express preference intensities over a sequence of decisions, in hopes that these innovations can provide insights that will improve committee decision making. This project models behavior in these environments using both Nash equilibrium and quantal response equilibrium. The laboratory experiments test these general theories of behavior, with an emphasis on the comparative statics predictions and the efficiency properties, and compare the performance of different mechanisms in specific environments. Extensions of these theories are developed. The analysis of the data explore these extended models of limited rationality to help explain where and why the theory seems to be adequate and where and why it misses. From the mechanism design perspective, it is critical to understand the behavioral foundations of strategic voting in order to predict how outcomes will change under different mechanisms. The experimental approach provides guidance in this direction. This project explores several different specifications of limited strategic sophistication, and formally specified models of judgement fallacies, such as base-rate neglect. (2) Broader impacts: In addition to basic research, the proposed research has an education component, by training graduate students in experimental economics and economic theory. The ultimate goal of the research is to better understand how procedures in committees can be modified to improve decision making and overcome obstacles such as conflicting preferences and beliefs, and asymmetric information. This better understanding in the long run can improve performance of organizations and policy-making institutions. The performance of voting procedures are evaluated according to traditional economic welfare criteria, informational efficiency, and equity. There is extensive software development proposed under the grant. This software may be used freely by other researchers in experimental economics and will be publicly available as open source code.

该项目从理论和实验观点的不完整信息条件下研究战略投票和委员会谈判机制。关于设计最佳投票机制以有效地汇总偏好和信息的一般理论问题，没有明确的副支付，以及此类机制下的实际行为。通过结合理论和实验观点，拟议的研究将在两个智力挑战方面取得进展。从理论上讲，存在一些问题，即不同投票机制的相对表现，可以在其中评估绩效相对于几种不同的目标，包括经济效率，信息效率和公平性。从机制设计的角度来看，拟议的研究方法是投票行为，并比较不同种类的环境中不同投票机制的性能。拟议的研究的一部分涉及研究新的投票机制，使选民能够表达出比一系列决策的偏好强度，希望这些创新可以提供能够改善委员会决策的见解。该项目使用NASH平衡和量子响应平衡在这些环境中进行行为。实验室实验测试了这些一般的行为理论，重点是比较静态的预测和效率特性，并比较了特定环境中不同机制的性能。这些理论的扩展是开发的。数据的分析探索了这些有限理性的扩展模型，以帮助解释该理论似乎在哪里以及为什么在何处以及为什么错过的地方。 从机制设计的角度来看，了解战略投票的行为基础至关重要，以预测结果如何在不同机制下变化。 实验方法在这个方向上提供了指导。 该项目探讨了有限的战略复杂性的几种不同规格，并正式指定的判断谬误模型，例如基本利率忽视。 （2）更广泛的影响：除基础研究外，拟议的研究还通过培训实验经济学和经济理论的研究生。该研究的最终目标是更好地了解如何修改委员会的程序以改善决策并克服诸如冲突的偏好和信念以及不对称信息等障碍。从长远来看，这种更好的理解可以提高组织和政策制定机构的绩效。根据传统的经济福利标准，信息效率和公平性评估投票程序的绩效。该赠款提出了广泛的软件开发。该软件可以由实验经济学的其他研究人员自由使用，并将作为开源代码公开使用。