【主讲】Aurelien Baillon (Erasmus University Rotterdam)
【主题】A market to read minds
【时间】2016年4月14日 (周四) 15：30-17：00
【地点】上海财经大学经济学院楼801室
【语言】英文
【摘要】Abstract: Financial markets reveal what investors think about the future. Nowadays, markets are also used to predict the results of the next US presidential election. But could we use markets to make people reveal personal information that only they know? For instance, their sexual behavior or their possibly shameful thoughts? I will present how to design such markets, called Bayesian markets, on which it is optimal for people to reveal the truth. On Bayesian markets, agents trade an asset whose value is the proportion of people answering Yes to a given question. Only those answering Yes have the right to buy the asset and those answering No the right to sell it. Using their own answers as signals to update their beliefs, “Yes” agents predict a higher value of the asset than “No” agents do. Consequently, “Yes” agents want to buy the asset while “No” agents want to sell it. Conditions ensuring truth-telling are established in the paper. Such markets can transform the way social scientists and survey companies collect data.
Bio of the Author: Aurelien Baillon is Professor of Economics of Uncertainty, in the Behavioral Economics group. He studied economics and management at Ecole Normale Superieure de Cachan and has a Ph.D. in economics from Arts et Metiers Paristech. Aurelien's work focuses on individual decision making under risk and ambiguity. Through both empirical and theoretical studies, his research addresses issues in subjective probability elicitation, models of attitude towards risk and ambiguity, and aggregation of expert opinions.
