题目1：Buying Information: Bargaining with Belief-relevant Outside Options

主讲人：冷泓霆（北京大学国发院17级本科生）

题目2：Competition with Correlation-Neglecting Agents

主讲人：王禛阳（北京大学光华管理学院17级本科生）

王禛阳（北京大学光华管理学院17级本科生）

参与老师：（经院）胡涛、吴泽南、石凡奇；（国发院）汪浩、胡岠

时间：2021年5月20日（周四）10:30-12:00

地点：经济学院305会议室

题目1：Buying Information: Bargaining with Belief-relevant Outside Options

主讲人简介：冷泓霆是北京大学国发院17级本科生，目前研究兴趣是动态博弈。

摘要：I study a bargaining problem where a buyer, who will make a decision under uncertainty, bargains with a seller for verifiable disclosure to the information about the uncertainty. There is a conflict of interest between the players: the seller is reluctant to disclose, because the correct decision made by the buyer is harmful to him. However, the seller is also threatened by the buyer, since the buyer can opt out and directly make a decision — although it is possibly wrong, and hence risky to the buyer. If the conflict of interest is small, there will be a unique equilibrium, where either opting out or trade occurs immediately. If the conflict is so large that the seller’s loss from the correct decision is beyond a threshold, it is in stark contrast that there will be a folk-theorem-like result, supporting a continuum of payoff to the buyer. Behind the comparison lies a tension: information leaking by the seller’s response prevents the buyer from choosing belief-relevant outside options, while mixing between outside options adds additional commitment power to the buyer.

题目2：Competition with Correlation-Neglecting Agents

主讲人简介：王禛阳是北京大学光华管理学院金融经济专业17级本科生，主要学习方向为行为经济学与微观经济理论。

摘要：We study how consumers’ cognitive limitation in belief-updating affects market competition. In our model, consumers may underestimate (and, in the extreme case, completely neglect) the correlation of the underlying information sources. We show that such misperception of signal correlation can have profound implications for the competition between heterogeneous firms. Consistent with the setting with perfectly Bayesian consumers, if products are sufficiently differentiated, the firms would optimally choose to fully disclose the true values of their products. However, if the degree of product differentiation is sufficiently small, the firms can profit from the cognitive limitation of the consumers by using vague product descriptions to impede comparisons. Our model predicts that as the correlation neglecting bias becomes more severe, the market price increases and more mismatches between firms and consumers arise in equilibrium.