Essays in economic theory
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- This dissertation consists of three self-contained essays. The first essay reconciles two seemingly competing explanations of context-dependent choice, one invoking psychological mechanisms, and the other Bayesian learning. We prove that standard context effects are features of the optimal solution to a general dynamic stochastic resource-acquisition problem. The model has two key ingredients: intertemporal substitution and learning about the environment. Interpreted as a description of animal foraging behavior, it explains why context effects might be adaptive in nature. Interpreted as a description of consumer choice problems, it suggests that context effects might result from rational inference. We ran a simple experiment to show that the latter interpretation sometimes holds. The second essay investigates the performance of rotating savings and credit associations (ROSCAs) in investment acceleration and welfare promotion for small-business entrepreneurs. In a model of privately observed investment returns, random ROSCAs improve upon autarky, while bidding ROSCAs can achieve efficiency. By relaxing the assumption of homogeneous agents calculating equilibria, it is shown that an expected-utility maximizer prefers some bidding ROSCAs to random ROSCAs regardless of her belief about others' strategies. Such analysis respects the Wilson doctrine, putting forth a novel framework for comparing mechanisms. The results highlight why more ROSCAs may embrace auction designs as economic development differentiates economic opportunities. The third essay explores the frontier between possibility and impossibility results in social choice theory by analyzing different combinations of "pro-socialness" and "consistency" conditions. This exercise delivers stronger versions of four classical impossibility theorems, and offers a thorough understanding of connections among them. We also characterize social choice functions that are "independent of irrelevant alternatives, " which makes evident that the fundamental difficulty of social choice lies in "pairwise" consistency requirements. We also introduce a concise pedagogical approach to classical impossibility theorems.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic; electronic resource; remote |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Publication date | 2015 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Associated with | Yu, Ning |
|---|---|
| Associated with | Stanford University, Department of Economics. |
| Primary advisor | Milgrom, Paul R. (Paul Robert), 1948- |
| Thesis advisor | Milgrom, Paul R. (Paul Robert), 1948- |
| Thesis advisor | Bernheim, B. Douglas |
| Thesis advisor | Roth, Alvin E, 1951- |
| Thesis advisor | Segal, Ilya |
| Advisor | Bernheim, B. Douglas |
| Advisor | Roth, Alvin E, 1951- |
| Advisor | Segal, Ilya |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Ning Yu. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Department of Economics. |
| Thesis | Thesis (Ph.D.)--Stanford University, 2015. |
| Location | electronic resource |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2015 by Ning Yu
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