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Full-Text Articles in Economic Theory

Random Mechanism Design On Multidimensional Domains, Shurojit Chatterji, Huaxia Zeng Oct 2017

Random Mechanism Design On Multidimensional Domains, Shurojit Chatterji, Huaxia Zeng

Research Collection School Of Economics

We study random mechanism design in an environment where the set of alternatives has a Cartesian product structure. We first show that all generalized random dictatorships are strategy-proof on a minimally rich domain if and only if the domain is a top-separable domain. We next generalize the notion of connectedness (Monjardet, 2009) to establish a particular class of top-separable domains: connected domains, and show that in the class of minimally rich and connected domains, the multidimensional single-peakedness restriction is necessary and sufficient for the design of a flexible random social choice function that is unanimous and strategy-proof. Such a flexible …


Fair Division With Uncertain Needs, Jingyi Xue Sep 2017

Fair Division With Uncertain Needs, Jingyi Xue

Research Collection School Of Economics

Imagine that agents have uncertain needs and a resource must be divided before uncertainty resolves. In this situation, waste typically occurs when the assignment to an agent turns out to exceed his realized need. How should the resource be divided in the face of possible waste? This is a question out of the scope of the existing rationing literature. Our main axiom to address the issue is no domination. It requires that no agent receive more of the resource than another while producing a larger expected waste, unless the other agent has been fully compensated. Together with conditional strict endowment …


Preferences With Changing Ambiguity Aversion, Jingyi Xue Sep 2017

Preferences With Changing Ambiguity Aversion, Jingyi Xue

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper provides two equivalent representations for thegeneral class of uncertainty averse preferences studied by Cerreia-Vioglio,Maccheroni, Marinacci and Montrucchio (2011). The two representations employrespectively two important extensions of Gilboa and Schmeidler (1989)’s maxmindecision rule. The first is a weighted maxmin representation with anon-constant weight used in mixing the minimum and maximum expected utilities.The second is a variant constraint representation which evaluates a prospect bythe worst expected utility over a neighborhood of approximating priors wherethe size of the neighborhood depends on the prospect. The equivalent representationshave advantage in several respects. In the second part of this paper, we studythe wealth effect …


Favorite-Longshot Bias In Pari-Mutuel Betting: An Evolutionary Explanation, Atsushi Kajii, Takahiro Watanabe Aug 2017

Favorite-Longshot Bias In Pari-Mutuel Betting: An Evolutionary Explanation, Atsushi Kajii, Takahiro Watanabe

Research Collection School Of Economics

Favorite-longshot bias (FLB) refers to an observed tendency whereby “longshots” are overvalued and favorites are undervalued. We offer an evolutionary explanation for FLB in pari-mutuel betting using a simple market model. A bettor is forced to quit with some probability if his total net gain in one day is negative. Because of a positive track take, the expected returns of any strategy are negative, and so every agent must eventually lose and disappear in the long run. Those who favor longshots have a better chance of getting ahead with rare but large gains, enabling them to survive for longer than …


Every Random Choice Rule Is Backwards-Induction Rationalizable, Jiangtao Li, Rui Tang Jul 2017

Every Random Choice Rule Is Backwards-Induction Rationalizable, Jiangtao Li, Rui Tang

Research Collection School Of Economics

Motivated by the literature on random choice and in particular the random utility models, we extend the analysis in Bossert and Sprumont (2013) to include the possibility that players exhibit stochastic preferences over alternatives. We prove that every random choice rule is backwards-induction rationalizable.


Robust Jump Regressions, Jia Li, Viktor Todorov, George Tauchen May 2017

Robust Jump Regressions, Jia Li, Viktor Todorov, George Tauchen

Research Collection School Of Economics

We develop robust inference methods for studying linear dependence between the jumps of discretely observed processes at high frequency. Unlike classical linear regressions, jump regressions are determined by a small number of jumps occurring over a fixed time interval and the rest of the components of the processes around the jump times. The latter are the continuous martingale parts of the processes as well as observation noise. By sampling more frequently the role of these components, which are hidden in the observed price, shrinks asymptotically. The robustness of our inference procedure is with respect to outliers, which are of particular …


Reduced Forms And Weak Instrumentation, Peter C. B. Phillips Mar 2017

Reduced Forms And Weak Instrumentation, Peter C. B. Phillips

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper develops exact finite sample and asymptotic distributions for a class of reduced form estimators and predictors, allowing for the presence of unidentified or weakly identified structural equations. Weak instrument asymptotic theory is developed directly from finite sample results, unifying earlier findings and showing the usefulness of structural information in making predictions from reduced form systems in applications. Asymptotic results are reported for predictions from models with many weak instruments. Of particular interest is the finding that, in unidentified and weakly identified structural models, partially restricted reduced form predictors have considerably smaller forecast mean square errors than unrestricted reduced …


How To Describe Objects?, Liu Peng Mar 2017

How To Describe Objects?, Liu Peng

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper addresses the problem of randomly allocating n indivisible objects to n agents where each object can be evaluated according to a set of characteristics. The planner chooses a subset of characteristics and a ranking of them. Then she describes each object as a list of values according to the ranking of those chosen characteristics. Being informed of such a description, each agent figures out her preference that is lexicographically separable according to the characteristics chosen and ranked by the planner. Hence a description of the objects induces a collection of admissible preferences. We call a description good if …


Random Assignments On Preference Domains With A Tier Structure, Peng Liu, Huaxia Zeng Feb 2017

Random Assignments On Preference Domains With A Tier Structure, Peng Liu, Huaxia Zeng

Research Collection School Of Economics

We address a standard random assignment problem (Bogomolnaia and Moulin (2001)) and search forsd-strategy-proof, sd-efficient and sd-envy-free or equal-treatment-of-equals rules.Our main result is that on a connected domain (Sato (2013)),if there exists a rule satisfying these axioms, this domain is endowed with a restricted tier structure.Furthermore, we show that, on such a domain, the Probabilistic Serial rule is the unique rulethat satisfies these axioms.As an extension, we introduce outside options to the model, and establish the same characterizations.


On Estimating Market Microstructure Noise Variance, Yingjie Dong, Yiu Kuen Tse Jan 2017

On Estimating Market Microstructure Noise Variance, Yingjie Dong, Yiu Kuen Tse

Research Collection School Of Economics

We study the market microstructure noise-variance estimation of high-frequency stock prices. Based on the Hansen and Lunde (2006) approach, we propose estimates using subsampling method at different time scales. We conduct a Monte Carlo study to compare our method against others in the literature. Our results show that our proposed estimates have lower (absolute) mean error and root mean-squared error, and their performance is quite stable at different time scales.


Strategy-Proofness Of The Probabilistic Serial Rule On Sequentially Dichotomous Domains, Peng Liu Jan 2017

Strategy-Proofness Of The Probabilistic Serial Rule On Sequentially Dichotomous Domains, Peng Liu

Research Collection School Of Economics

A class of preference domains is proposed: sequentially dichotomous domains. On any sequentially dichotomous domain, the probabilistic serial rule (Bogomolnaia and Moulin (2001)) is sd-strategy-proof. In addition, any sequentially dichotomous domain is maximal for the probabilistic serial rule to be sd-strategy-proof.


Mixed-Scale Jump Regressions With Bootstrap Inference, Jia Li, Viktor Todorov, George Tauchen Jan 2017

Mixed-Scale Jump Regressions With Bootstrap Inference, Jia Li, Viktor Todorov, George Tauchen

Research Collection School Of Economics

We develop an efficient mixed-scale estimator for jump regressions using high-frequency asset returns. A fine time scale is used to accurately identify the locations of large rare jumps in the explanatory variables such as the price of the market portfolio. A coarse scale is then used in the estimation in order to attenuate the effect of trading frictions in the dependent variable such as the prices of potentially less liquid assets. The proposed estimator has a non-standard asymptotic distribution that cannot be made asymptotically pivotal via studentization. We propose a novel bootstrap procedure for feasible inference and justify its asymptotic …


Jump Regressions, Jia Li, Viktor Todorov, George Tauchen Jan 2017

Jump Regressions, Jia Li, Viktor Todorov, George Tauchen

Research Collection School Of Economics

We develop econometric tools for studying jump dependence of two processes from high-frequency observations on a fixed time interval. In this context, only segments of data around a few outlying observations are informative for the inference. We derive an asymptotically valid test for stability of a linear jump relation over regions of the jump size domain. The test has power against general forms of nonlinearity in the jump dependence as well as temporal instabilities. We further propose an efficient estimator for the linear jump regression model that is formed by optimally weighting the detected jumps with weights based on the …


Sharing Sequential Values In A Network, Ruben Juarez, Chiu Yu Ko, Jingyi Xue Dec 2016

Sharing Sequential Values In A Network, Ruben Juarez, Chiu Yu Ko, Jingyi Xue

Research Collection School Of Economics

Consider a sequential process where agents have individual values at every possible step. A planner is in charge of selecting steps and distributing the accumulated aggregate values among agents. We model this process by a directed network where each edge is associated with a vector of individual values. This model applies to several new and existing problems, e.g., developing a connected public facility and distributing total values received by surrounding districts; selecting a long-term production plan and sharing final profits among partners of a firm; choosing a machine schedule to serve different tasks and distributing total outputs among task owners. …


Associationistic Luce Rule, Jiangtao Li, Rui Tang Sep 2016

Associationistic Luce Rule, Jiangtao Li, Rui Tang

Research Collection School Of Economics

We develop an extension of Luce’s random choice model that incorporates a role forthe association of alternatives. Each alternative is characterized by a salience value, aLuce value, and its associated alternatives. The salience value captures the alternative’sability to attract the decision maker’s attention, and the Luce value measures thealternative’s desirability. The decision maker is first attracted by some alternativeaccording to a salience-based Luce-type formula, and then chooses among its associatedalternatives according to another desirability-based Luce-type formula. While retainingthe simplicity of the Luce rule, the theory accommodates some well-known behavioralphenomena in individual choice, such as the attraction effect (violations of regularity),and …


Inference Theory On Volatility Functional Dependencies, Jia Li, Viktor Todorov, George. Tauchen Jul 2016

Inference Theory On Volatility Functional Dependencies, Jia Li, Viktor Todorov, George. Tauchen

Research Collection School Of Economics

We develop inference theory for models involving possibly nonlinear transforms of the elements of the spot covariance matrix of a multivariate continuous-time process observed at high frequency. The framework can be used to study the relationship among the elements of the latent spot covariance matrix and processes defined on the basis of it such as systematic and idiosyncratic variances, factor betas and correlations on a fixed interval of time. The estimation is based on matching model-implied moment conditions under the occupation measure induced by the spot covariance process. We prove consistency and asymptotic mixed normality of our estimator of the …


Gray's Anatomy: Understanding Uncertainty, Juliana Yu Sun, Roberto M. Samaniego Jul 2016

Gray's Anatomy: Understanding Uncertainty, Juliana Yu Sun, Roberto M. Samaniego

Research Collection School Of Economics

We explore the key mechanisms whereby uncertainty impacts the business cycle by exploring the interaction of uncertainty with growth in industries with di⁄erent technologies of production. We nd that uncertainty shocks are particularly detrimental to growth in industries with rapid capital depreciation or high investment adjustment costs. The ndings are consistent with real options theory: uncertainty leads rms to delay investment in new projects, but high depreciation and xed costs of investment make delay more costly. On the other hand, we do not nd evidence of a signicant role of nancial markets in the generation nor propagation of uncertainty shocks.


Precautionary Saving With Changing Income Ambiguity, Atsushi Kajii, Jingyi Xue Jun 2016

Precautionary Saving With Changing Income Ambiguity, Atsushi Kajii, Jingyi Xue

Research Collection School Of Economics

We study a two-period saving model where theagent’s future income might be ambiguous. Our agent has a version of the smoothambiguity decision criterion (Klibano, Marinacci and Mukerji (2005)), where theagent’s perception about ambiguity is described by a second-order belief overfirst-order risks. We model increasing ambiguity as a spreading-out of thesecond-order belief. We show that under a “Risk Comonotonicity” condition, ouragent saves more when ambiguity in future income increases. We argue that thecondition is indispensable for our result.


Efficient Dynamic Mechanisms With Interdependent Valuations, Wei He, Jiangtao Li May 2016

Efficient Dynamic Mechanisms With Interdependent Valuations, Wei He, Jiangtao Li

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper considers a dynamic environment with interdependent valuations and evolving private information. Under the assumption of “independent types”, we construct an efficient, incentive-compatible mechanism that is also budget-balanced in every period of the game. Our mechanism works in environments where in each period, each agent observes her own realized outcome-decision payoff from the previous period. This extends the insight of Mezzetti (2004) to the dynamic setting.


A Characterization Of Single‐Peaked Preferences Via Random Social Choice Functions, Shurojit Chatterji, Arunava Sen, Huaxia Zeng May 2016

A Characterization Of Single‐Peaked Preferences Via Random Social Choice Functions, Shurojit Chatterji, Arunava Sen, Huaxia Zeng

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper proves the following result: every path-connected domain of preferences that admits a strategy-proof, unanimous, tops-only random social choice function satisfying a compromise property is single-peaked. Conversely, every single-peaked domain admits a random social choice function satisfying these properties. Single-peakedness is defined with respect to arbitrary trees. The paper provides a justification of the salience of single-peaked preferences and evidence in favor of the Gul conjecture (Barber\303\240 2010).


Entrepreneurship, Education And Credit: The Golden Triangle, Roberto M. Samaniego, Juliana Yu Sun Apr 2016

Entrepreneurship, Education And Credit: The Golden Triangle, Roberto M. Samaniego, Juliana Yu Sun

Research Collection School Of Economics

We develop a model to evaluate the impact of college education finance on welfare, inequality and aggregate outcomes. Our model captures the stylized fact that entrepreneurs with college are more common and more profitable. Our calibration to US data suggests this is mainly because higher labor earnings allow college educated agents to ameliorate credit constraints when they become entrepreneurs. The welfare benefits of subsidizing education are greater than those of eliminating financing constraints on education because subsidies ameliorate the impact of financing constraints on would-be entrepreneurs.


Entrepreneurship, College And Credit: The Golden Triangle, Roberto M Samaniego, Juliana Yu Sun Apr 2016

Entrepreneurship, College And Credit: The Golden Triangle, Roberto M Samaniego, Juliana Yu Sun

Research Collection School Of Economics

We develop a model to evaluate the impact of college education finance on welfare, inequality and aggregate outcomes. Our model captures the stylized fact that entrepreneurs with college are more common and more profitable. Our calibration to US data suggests this is mainly because higher labor earnings allow college educated agents to ameliorate credit constraints when they become entrepreneurs. The welfare benefits of subsidizing education are greater than those of eliminating financing constraints on education because subsidies ameliorate the impact of financing constraints on would-be entrepreneurs.


Implementation With Transfers, Yi-Chun Chen, Takashi Kunimoto, Yifei Sun Mar 2016

Implementation With Transfers, Yi-Chun Chen, Takashi Kunimoto, Yifei Sun

Research Collection School Of Economics

We say that a social choice rule is implementable with (small) transfers if one candesign a mechanism whose set of equilibrium outcomes coincides with that speciÖed bythe rule but the mechanism allows for (small) ex post transfers among the players. Weshow in private-value environments that any incentive compatible rule is implementablewith small transfers. We obtain this permissive implementation result by proposinga natural extension of Abreu and Matsushima (1994) to incomplete information environments.Furthermore, in order to showcase the applicability of our results, we relatethem to the recent developments in implementation theory. Next we revisit the conjectureby Abreu and Matsushima (1994), who …


Model Selection For Explosive Models, Yubo Tao, Jun Yu Mar 2016

Model Selection For Explosive Models, Yubo Tao, Jun Yu

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper examines the limit properties of information criteria for distinguishing between the unit root model and the various kinds of explosive models. The information criteria include AIC, BIC, HQIC. The explosive models include the local-to-unit-root model, the mildly explosive model and the regular explosive model. Initial conditions with different order of magnitude are considered. Both the OLS estimator and the indirect inference estimator are studied. It is found that BIC and HQIC, but not AIC, consistently select the unit root model when data come from the unit root model. When data come from the local-to-unit-root model, both BIC and …


Constrained Inefficiency And Optimal Taxation With Uninsurable Risks, Piero Gottardi, Atsushi Kajii, Tomoyuki Nakajima Feb 2016

Constrained Inefficiency And Optimal Taxation With Uninsurable Risks, Piero Gottardi, Atsushi Kajii, Tomoyuki Nakajima

Research Collection School Of Economics

When individuals' labor and capital income are subject to uninsurable idiosyncratic risks, should capital and labor be taxed, and if so how? In a two-period general equilibrium model with production, we derive a decomposition formula of the welfare effects of these taxes into insurance and distribution effects. This allows us to determine how the sign of the optimal taxes on capital and labor depend on the nature of the shocks and the degree of heterogeneity among consumers' income, as well as on the way in which the tax revenue is used to provide lump-sum transfers to consumers. When shocks affect …


Robust Information Cascade With Endogenous Ordering, Yi Zhang Jan 2016

Robust Information Cascade With Endogenous Ordering, Yi Zhang

Research Collection School Of Economics

We analyze a sequential decision model with endogenous ordering in which decision makers are allowed to choose the time of acting (exercising a risky investment option) or waiting. We show the existence of a unique symmetric equilibrium and characterize information cascade under endogenous ordering. Further, if there are two or more risky investment options, individuals tend to wait longer with competition. Hence, we could end up with a dilemma: more options might be worse.


Optimal Taxation And Debt With Uninsurable Risks To Human Capital Accumulation, Piero Gottardi, Atsushi Kajii, Tomoyuki Nakajima Nov 2015

Optimal Taxation And Debt With Uninsurable Risks To Human Capital Accumulation, Piero Gottardi, Atsushi Kajii, Tomoyuki Nakajima

Research Collection School Of Economics

We consider an economy where individuals face uninsurable risks to their human capital accumulation and analyze the optimal level of linear taxes on capital and labor income together with the optimal path of government debt. We show that in the presence of such risks, it is beneficial to tax both labor and capital and to issue public debt. We also assess the quantitative importance of these findings, and show that the benefits of government debt and capital taxes both increase with the magnitude of idiosyncratic risks and the degree of relative risk aversion.


Agreeing To Agree And Dutch Books, Yi-Chun Chen, Ehud Lehrer, Jiangtao Li, Dov Samet, Eran Shmaya Sep 2015

Agreeing To Agree And Dutch Books, Yi-Chun Chen, Ehud Lehrer, Jiangtao Li, Dov Samet, Eran Shmaya

Research Collection School Of Economics

We say that agreeing to agree is possible for an event E if there exist posterior beliefs of the agents with a common prior such that it is common knowledge that the agents' posteriors for E coincide. We propose a notion called Dutch book which is a profile of interim contracts between an outsider and the agents based on the occurrence of E, such that the outsider makes positive profit in all states. We show that in a finite state space, when the agents cannot tell whether Eoccurred or not, agreeing to agree is possible for E if and only …


Wealth Inequality And Financial Development: Revisiting The Symmetry Breaking Mechanism, Haiping Zhang Sep 2015

Wealth Inequality And Financial Development: Revisiting The Symmetry Breaking Mechanism, Haiping Zhang

Research Collection School Of Economics

No abstract provided.


Inefficiency In The Shadow Of Unobservable Reservation Payoffs, Madhav S. Aney Apr 2015

Inefficiency In The Shadow Of Unobservable Reservation Payoffs, Madhav S. Aney

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper considers the problem of allocating an object between two players in an environment with one sided asymmetric information when their reservation payoffs depend on the type of the informed player, causing the reservation payoff of the uninformed player to be unobservable to her. Inefficiency arises naturally in this setting and can be characterized by a simple condition on the reservation payoffs that is necessary and sufficient. I derive the necessary and sufficient condition for the existence of an implementable allocation that at least weakly dominates the reservation payoffs. Under a mild assumption on the distribution of types, I …