Calendrier du 02 décembre 2021
TOM (Théorie, Organisation et Marchés) Lunch Seminar
Du 02/12/2021 de 12:30 à 13:30
Salle R1-14 - Campus Jourdan 75014 PARIS
TUMENNASAN Norovsambuu (Dalhousie University)
One Truth and a Thousand Lies: Defaults and Benchmarks in Mechanism Design
We study a behavioral robust implementation problem in which agents are endowed with benchmark strategies. Benchmarks may arise, for instance, as a consequence of recommendations made by the planner, or through social norms. We introduce (Interim) Behavioral Benchmark Equilibria (BBE) and prove a revelation principle: any social choice function (SCF) implementable in BBE is also fully implementable by a direct revelation mechanism in which agents' benchmark action is truthtelling. Specializing to direct mechanisms, we provide the following results. First, behavioral robust implementation is equivalent to interim rationalizability with iterative elimination of strategies that are dominated by truthtelling. When preferences are interdependent, an SCF is behavioral robust implementable if and only if it satisfies a strengthening of the contraction property, Bergemann and Morris (2009) (BM). We document the restrictions that behavioral agents impose: in a leading example of BM, the maximum possible interdependence in preferences is half the bound identified in BM. Behavioral robust implementation is therefore possible. In addition we show that in any private value environments, behavioral agents impose no further restrictions than those already imposed by robust implementation.
Behavior seminar
Du 02/12/2021 de 11:00 à 12:00
Online
MATTAUCH Linus (University of Oxford)
Healthy Climate, Healthy Bodies: Optimal Fuel Taxation and Physical Activit
Transport has significant externalities including carbon emissions and air pollution. Public health research has identified additional social gains from active travel, due to health benefits of physical exercise. Per mile, these benefits greatly exceed the external costs from car use. We introduce active travel into an optimal fuel taxation model and analytically characterise the optimal second-best fuel tax. We find that accounting for active travel benefits increases the optimal fuel tax by 49% in the US and 36% in the UK. Fuel taxes should be implemented jointly with other policies aimed at increasing the uptake of active travel.