【主讲】Dr. 胡岠 (助教授, 北京大学国家发展研究院)
【主题】Consumer Search and Optimal Information
【时间】2018年3月13日 (周二) 15：30-17：00
【地点】上海财经大学经济学院楼701室
【语言】英文
【摘要】This paper studies a consumer search model where consumers’ valuation of firms’ products are uncertain and the consumer only observes a noisy signal about his valuation if he is matched with a firm. Firms simultaneously charge prices and consumers sequentially search. Our goad is to characterize those signal structures which maximize consumer surplus. We show that a generalized unit-elastic demand signal structure is consumer-optimal. The optimal generalized unit-elastic demand signal structure always exists and is unique within this class of signal structures. For binary value distribution, we can explicitly solve the optimal signal structure. We also show that the informativeness of the optimal signal structure is piecewisely monotone with respect to the search cost. Higher search cost leads to less informative optimal signal structure when it is small, while higher search cost leads to more informative optimal signal structure when it is big.
【讲员简介】胡岠博士是北京大学国家发展研究院助理教授，于2016年获得宾夕法尼亚大学经济学博士学位。他的主要研究领域是微观经济理论，博弈论和信息经济学。其研究成果曾发表在经济理论的顶级期刊Journal of Economic Theory上。
