Questions tagged [incentives]
16 questions
49
votes
8 answers
How do economists explain why people contribute to Wikipedia?
What incentives do contributors have?
I believe they earn no money. And usually, they earn no reputation either, because most of the contributions are anonymous.
I believe this is a public goods game. Have economists studied this "Wikipedia puzzle"?…
user16353
8
votes
1 answer
Is "avoiding being the bearer of bad news" an example of the "principal-agent problem"?
For example:
A king designs a bridge, and he unknowingly does a bad job. He asks an engineer for her opinion, but the engineer fears that if she tells the truth, the dictator will be angry with her.
More generally, I'm thinking of situations in…
wintergreen_plaza
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4
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1 answer
Incentive compatibilty conditions for multi-item auctions
In this paper by Myerson on optimal single item auctions, the incentive compatibility condition is shown to be equivalent to the following simpler conditions on the auction - (i) the allocation probability being monotonic in bid (ii) the form of the…
Aniruddha Acharya
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3
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1 answer
Design of efficient cheap talk communication
Are there any papers about efficient cheap talk communication, where the players achieve the equilibrium payoffs of a correlated strategy as in Aumann's seminal paper? Or in case no such paper exists, could someone combine specific papers to proove…
Hunger Learn
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What's the difference between Ex-post Incentive Compatibility and Dominant-Strategy Incentive Compatibility
According to the Wikipedia definition of Dominant-Strategy Incentive Compatibility (DSIC):
DSIC means truth-telling is a weakly-dominant strategy, i.e. you fare best or at least not worse by being truthful, regardless of what the others do
I…
Francis
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locating specific model from organizational economics
I am trying to find one specific model from organizational economics that I encountered in one of my past classes, but I cant remember the name of the model and google scholar search based on some of the information below was not helpful, and I…
1muflon1
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What is the meaning of "labor input" in the context of incentive theories?
In the article "Multitask Principal-Agent Analyses: Incentive Contracts, Asset Ownership, and Job Design" (Holmström and Milgrom, 1991) it is said that two identical agents ($i=1,2$) devote attention $t_i(k)$ to a task $k$, i.e., they allocate…
2
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3 answers
What are the economics behind web spam?
In this question, I'm referring to "web spam" on search engines (not email spam), such as placing misleading keywords on one's web page so that a pornographic site, for example, would get a lot of traffic that isn't necessarily related to what the…
Joebevo
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1
vote
1 answer
Strike time in a game
Suppose A forwards a puzzle to B where if B solves the puzzle within 24 hours then it gets a payoff of M (M>0), if not then it gets nothing i.e. 0. Consider A locks the money with the bank for the 24hours and if B solves the puzzle it withdraws the…
Subhra Mazumdar
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Which mathematics are required for fully understanding the theories of the firm?
When I say "theories of the firm", I'm referring, in particular, to the theories exposed in the next works: 1) Transaction Cost Economics exposed in "Transaction Cost Economics" by Tadelis and Williamson (2013) (chapter 4 of "The Handbook of…
1
vote
0 answers
Is there a standard term for this tradeoff when subsidizing: inducing dependence vs providing support?
I've often heard it informally argued "people will become lazy if you give them handouts". Although I doubt the economic sophistication of most such assertions, I do think they have a real point: you might incentivize reduced productivity and…
BoxBaron
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What is a super deduction?
This is a term often encountered in documents published by the Big Four (Deloitte, Ernst & Young, Price Waterhouse Coopers, KPMG), for instance in the E&Y 2018 Worldwide R&D Incentives Reference Guide.
However, I've been unable to find a definition,…
David Cian
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Has contest theory ever been used to design real-world contests?
Contest theory, very much like auction theory, studies how people act in a contest and the properties of such a competition. There is a large literature that investigates different aspects of the contest, including efficiency, participation, total…
mrb
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Why do users post information and their opinions on micro-blogging platforms?
I am working on a research paper in which I will investigate the impact of social media and micro-blogging platforms on the financial market. With regard to the theoretical foundations, I would like to explain why people or investors post their…
TobKel
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Would search engine spam still be a problem even if every incoming click were to cost money?
Search engine spam can be thought of as any activity that seeks to gain attention for a web page through deceptive means. I suspect that search engine spam is a natural result of profit-maximizing behavior of webmasters in the absence of a per-click…
Joebevo
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