Date: Dec.12, 2019

Time: 15:00-16:30

Speaker: GAO Xin

Venue: Room 418, School of Economics, Yuquan Campus

[Speaker Intro]

GAO Xin holds a PhD in economics from University of Mannheim and conducts postdoctoral research in University of Cambridge. Gao’s research mainly focuses on micro theory, information economics and mechanism design.

【Abstract】

A principal delegates decisions to a biased agent. Payoffs depend on a state that the principal cannot observe. The agent does not initially observe this state, but he can learn about it by privately experimenting, at a cost. We characterize the principal's optimal delegation set. This set has a cap to restrict the agent's bias, but it may have a hole around safe decisions in order to encourage information acquisition. Unlike in standard delegation models, the principal's payoff is maximized when the agent's bias is nonzero.