The Principal-Agent Matching Market

We propose a model based on competitive markets in order to analyse an economy with several principals and agents. We model the principal-agent economy as a two-sided matching game and characterise the set of stable outcomes of this principal-agent matching market. A simple mechanism to implement the set of stable outcomes is proposed. Finally, we put forward examples of principal-agent economies where the results fit.principal-agent, moral hazard, matching, implementation

Construir el diálogo científico en la Matemática: la búsqueda del equilibrio entre símbolos y palabras en artículos de investigación sobre Teoría de Juegos

Maestría en Inglés con Orientación en Lingüística AplicadaMost scientific communication is conducted in English, which may be a difficult task and a source of obstacles for researchers whose primary language is not English (Bitchenera & Basturkmen, 2006; Borlogan, 2009; Duff, 2010; Matsuda & Matsuda, 2010). As a matter of concern for language scholars, this situation requires at least two actions: (1) the development of research focused on the problems faced by researchers when writing in a foreign language, and (2) the design and implementation of pedagogical and didactic programmes or services aimed at providing researchers with the tools to enhance their linguistic and rhetorical skills. In both cases, the ultimate objective of these lines of action is to help researchers integrate into and interact with their knowledge communities in an independent, active and successful way. Considering those needs and the emerging interest in English as a lingua franca or as an international language, many scholars have devoted to studying the features of writing and language use across the world and across disciplines (Hyland, 2004; Matsuda & Matsuda, 2010; Mercado, 2010). However, few have explored the case of Mathematics (Lemke, 2002; Morgan, 2008; O’Halloran, 2005; Schleppegrell, 2007), and even fewer have investigated the discourse of scientific research articles (SRA) in this discipline (Graves & Moghadassi, 2013, 2014). In view of this situation, investigation of the discourse of science in the field of Mathematics (Game Theory - GT) as used in the Institute of Applied Mathematics (IMASL), at the National University of San Luis (UNSL), becomes both an answer to local researchers’ needs and an attempt to contribute to current research in writing, evaluative discourse and use of English as an international language for the communication of science. Thus, the main objective of this work is to conduct a comparative description between unpublished GT SRAs written in English by IMASL researchers and published GT SRAs written in English by international authors, in terms of linguistic features used to build authorship and authorial stance. The exploration of the genre is made from the perspective of the system of Appraisal (Hood, 2010; Martin & White, 2005; White, 2000), with the aid of Corpus Linguistics (CL) tools (Cheng, 2012; Meyer, 2002; Tognini-Bonelli, 2001). The results of this research are expected to be useful for the enhancement of knowledge of language professionals devoted to the teaching of writing as well as translation, proofreading, editing and reviewing services. A further goal is to lay the foundations for the production of didactic material which can potentially be incorporated into writing courses or professional writing, translation, reviewing and proofreading training programmes.Fil: Lucero Arrua, Graciela Beatriz. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Facultad de Lenguas; Argentina

Preliminary Results for Cooperative Extensions of the Bayesian Game

The descriptive theory of cooperative game with incomplete information developed to date is surveyed. The theory has the potential to provide game-theoretical foundations of economic analysis of the free societies in which organizations (coalitions) as corporations institute a non-market resource allocation mechanism while using the market resource allocation mechanism at the same time. The present-day corporations are interdependent, so the required game theory needs to model an environment in which the feasibility and implications of coordinated strategy choice within a coalition are influenced by the outsiders of strategy choice. The first part of the paper provides the key ingredients. After formulating the basic one-shot model, which synthesizes Harsanyi's Bayesian game and Aumann and Peleg's non-side-payment game (NTU game), and illustrating economic examples, two required conditions on an endogenously determined strategy are discussed: measurability with respect to an information structure, and Bayesian incentive compatibility. Several descriptive solution concepts that have been proposed to date are discussed. The second part addresses six issues studied in the literature: First, the existence of the descriptive solutions in the general setup. Second, explanation of information revelation, that is, a process through which private information turns into public information. Third, definitions of efficiency. Fourth, comparisons of several core concepts. Fifth, the existence results specific only to the Bayesian pure exchange economy, and revival of the core convergence theorem within the framework of the Bayesian pure exchange economy. Sixth, another view on coalition formation, specifically analyses of situations in which coalitional membership is anonymous.

Matching with Waiting Times: The German Entry-Level Labor Market for Lawyers

We study the allocation of German lawyers to regional courts for legal trainee-ships. Because of excess demand in some regions lawyers often have to wait before being allocated. The currently used "Berlin" mechanism is not weakly Pareto efficient, does not eliminate justified envy and does not respect improvements. We introduce a mechanism based on the matching with contracts literature, using waiting time as the contractual term. The resulting mechanism is strategy-proof, weakly Pareto efficient, eliminates justified envy and respects improvements. We extend our proposed mechanism to allow for a more flexible allocation of positions over time

Essays on Matching With Endogenous Effort

This thesis extends the two-sided matching literature by including an endogenous effort choice after the matching stage. We examine how different matching rules affect incentives to exert effort and the costs paid to induce various effort levels in three settings: a legal system, an education system, and a labor market. In an indigent defense program, the government provides counsel for indigent defendants. After the assignment of an attorney to a defendant, the attorney exerts a costly effort; however, the government only observes a noisy signal of the effort. We model the problem as a one-to-one matching problem with moral hazard. We show that holding the total expenditure for counsel fixed and changing the matching procedure to accommodate defendants\u27 and attorneys\u27 preferences, i.e., switch from random matching to stable matching, defendants become worse off because a stable matching exacerbates the moral hazard problem on the part of counsel. In in the second case we consider a teacher who chooses a costly effort after observing the distribution of students assigned to his/her class. We model the problem as a many-to-one matching with a costly non-contractible effort choice. We show that the effect of policies that affect the student assignment to classes, such as tracking, implementing school choice, and voucher programs, depends on the curvature of teachers\u27 marginal utility of effort. We find conditions under which the argmax of a maximization problem is strictly supermodular or strictly submodular. Subsequently, we characterize conditions under which sorting students based on their academic performances increases (decreases) the total effort of teachers and the average performance of students. In the third setting, we consider a labor market in which each worker chooses an effort after assignment to a firm. The effort choice, labor in this setting, is observable and contractible. We show that the profit maximizing labor maximizes the total surplus of the match. Moreover, the unique matching in any equilibrium maximizes the total surplus; however, this matching may have a lower total output compared with any other matching. Stated differently, eliminating labor market frictions increases the efficiency; however, it may increase or decrease the total output

Wealth Effects, Distribution and the Theory of Organization

We construct a general equilibrium model of firm formation in which organization is endogenous. Firms are coalitions of agents providing effort and investment capital. Effort is unobservable unless a fixed monitoring cost is paid, and borrowing is subject to a costly state verification problem. Because incentives vary with an agents wealth, different types of agents become attractive firm members under different circumstances. When borrowing is not costly, firms essentially consist of one type of agent and are organized efficiently. But when the costly state verification problem is sufficiently severe, firm organization will depend on the distribution of wealth: with enough inequality, it will tend to be dictated by incentives of rich agents to earn high returns to wealth, even if the chosen organizational form is not a technically efficient way to provide incentives

Promoting School Competition Through School Choice: A Market Design Approach

We study the effect of different school choice mechanisms on schools' incentives for quality improvement. To do so, we introduce the following criterion: A mechanism respects improvements of school quality if each school becomes weakly better off whenever that school becomes more preferred by students. We first show that no stable mechanism, or mechanism that is Pareto efficient for students (such as the Boston and top trading cycles mechanisms), respects improvements of school quality. Nevertheless, for large school districts, we demonstrate that any stable mechanism approximately respects improvements of school quality; by contrast, the Boston and top trading cycles mechanisms fail to do so. Thus a stable mechanism may provide better incentives for schools to improve themselves than the Boston and top trading cycles mechanisms.Matching; School Choice; School Competition; Stability; Efficiency

Matching with Couples: Stability and Incentives in Large Markets

Accommodating couples has been a longstanding issue in the design of centralized labor market clearinghouses for doctors and psychologists, because couples view pairs of jobs as complements. A stable matching may not exist when couples are present. We find conditions under which a stable matching exists with high probability in large markets. We present a mechanism that finds a stable matching with high probability, and which makes truth-telling by all participants an approximate equilibrium. We relate these theoretical results to the job market for psychologists, in which stable matchings exist for all years of the data, despite the presence of couples.