Screening Inattentive Agents

Speaker
Jeffrey Mensch
Date
17/12/2019 - 13:00 - 11:30Add To Calendar 2019-12-17 11:30:00 2019-12-17 13:00:00 Screening Inattentive Agents Abstract: Information plays a crucial role in mechanism design problems. A  potential complication is that this information may endogenously and flexibly depend on what options they are offered. I model this by considering an optimal mechanism design problem in which a principal screens agents with uncertain value. The agent is inattentive regarding their true value, and decides how to optimally acquire information in response to the offered mechanism. I show that any implementable mechanism is characterized by a non-participation belief, which in turn determines the beliefs and prices for every possible probability of allocation (including those not chosen). For every possible non-participation belief, the mechanism design problem then reduces to one of Bayesian persuasion. The optimal mechanism is then implicitly determined by choosing the optimal non-participation belief. I provide results characterizing optimal mechanisms in both the single- and multiple-agent cases. Faculty Lounge, Building 504, First Floor אוניברסיטת בר-אילן - Department of Economics Economics.Dept@mail.biu.ac.il Asia/Jerusalem public
Place
Faculty Lounge, Building 504, First Floor
Affiliation
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Abstract

Abstract: Information plays a crucial role in mechanism design problems. A  potential complication is that this information may endogenously and flexibly depend on what options they are offered. I model this by considering an optimal mechanism design problem in which a principal screens agents with uncertain value. The agent is inattentive regarding their true value, and decides how to optimally acquire information in response to the offered mechanism. I show that any implementable mechanism is characterized by a non-participation belief, which in turn determines the beliefs and prices for every possible probability of allocation (including those not chosen). For every possible non-participation belief, the mechanism design problem then reduces to one of Bayesian persuasion. The optimal mechanism is then implicitly determined by choosing the optimal non-participation belief. I provide results characterizing optimal mechanisms in both the single- and multiple-agent cases.

Last Updated Date : 01/12/2019