讲座题目：On the Optimal Design of Biased Contests

报告人：吴泽南

报告时间：2019年11月29日上午9：00-10：00

报告地点：经管院B224

主办单位：珞珈青年经济与管理论坛

      经济学系

      数理经济与数理金融系

内容摘要：This paper explores the optimal design of biased contests. A designer imposes an identity-dependent treatment on contestants, which varies the balance of the playing field. A generalized lottery contest typically yields no closed-form equilibrium solutions, which nullifies the usual implicit programming approach to optimal contest design and limits analysis to restricted settings. We propose an alternative approach that allows us to circumvent this difficulty and characterize the optimum in a general setting under a wide array of objective functions without solving for the equilibrium explicitly. Our technique applies to broad contexts, and the analysis it enables generates novel insights into incentive provision in contests and their optimal design. For instance, we demonstrate that the conventional wisdom of leveling the playing field, which is obtained in limited settings in previous studies, does not generally hold.

主讲人简介：吴泽南，男，博士，北京大学经济学院助理教授。于2015年获宾夕法尼亚大学经济学博士学位，同年任教于北京大学经济学院经济学系。研究领域为应用微观理论，产业组织理论以及保险市场。研究成果在RAND Journal of Economics，Journal of Economics & Management Strategy，Geneva Risk and Insurance Review，Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Economics and Finance，Economics Letters等期刊上发表。