主题：Information Disclosure and Favoritism in Contests
主讲人：吴泽南（北京大学经济学院）
主持人：杨仁琨（暨南大学）
会议时间：2022年11月16日（周三）15:00-16:30
腾讯会议：ID：751-453-762 密码：221116
摘要
Two contestants compete for a prize. The value of the prize is common and initially unknown to the contestants. A designer has two instruments for the design of the contest: (i) information disclosure, and (ii) favoritism. First, she can conduct an investigation and obtain a noisy signal regarding the value of the prize; she can decide whether to reveal the signal to each contestant. Second, she can bias the competition by favoring one of the contestants. We show that the form of optimal contest depends on the designer's objective. When she maximizes the expected total effort of the contest, the optimal disclosure is always symmetric---such that contestants either are informed or remain uninformed---while biasing the competition when contestants are asymmetric. When the designer maximizes the expected winner's effort, we find that the two instruments exhibit complementarity. The designer may deliberately create information asymmetry by revealing the signal to only one contestant, while releveling the playing field by favoring the other, even if the contestants are symmetric ex ante. Our analysis provides novel insights into the nature of these design instruments.
主讲人简介
吴泽南，北京大学经济学院副教授，本科毕业于清华大学经管学院，博士毕业于宾夕法尼亚大学经济系。研究领域为应用微观理论，具体包括竞赛理论、保险市场和行为经济学。研究成果发表于国际权威期刊，包括Theoretical Economics, Journal of Economic Theory, RAND Journal of Economics, American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, Games and Economic Behavior, Journal of Economics & Management Strategy,Journal of Mathematical Economics等等。
