Mechanism Design with Limited Commitment

We develop a tool akin to the revelation principle for mechanism design with limited commitment. We identify a canonical class of mechanisms rich enough to replicate the payoffs of any equilibrium in a mechanism-selection game between an uninformed designer and a privately informed agent. A cornerstone of our methodology is the idea that a mechanism should encode not only the rules that determine the allocation, but also the information the designer obtains from the interaction with the agent. Therefore, how much the designer learns, which is the key tension in design with limited commitment, becomes an explicit part of the design. We show how this insight can be used to transform the designer's problem into a constrained optimization one: To the usual truthtelling and participation constraints, one must add the designer's sequential rationality constraint.Comment: Added an omitted assumption in Section 4 (see footnote 21 and the proof of Proposition 4.1

Purchase history and product personalization

Product personalization opens the door to price discrimination. A rich product line allows for higher consumer satisfaction, but the mere choice of a product carries valuable information about the consumer that the firm can leverage for price discrimination. Controlling the degree of product personalization provides the firm with an additional tool to curb ratcheting forces arising from consumers' awareness of being price discriminated. Indeed, a firm's inability to not engage in price discrimination introduces a novel distortion: The firm offers a subset of the products that it would offer if, instead, the firm could commit to not price discriminate. Doing so gives commitment power to the firm: By "pooling" consumers with different tastes to the same variety the firm commits not to learn their tastes

Sequential Information Design

We study games of incomplete information as both the information structure and the extensive form vary. An analyst may know the payoff‐relevant data but not the players' private information, nor the extensive form that governs their play. Alternatively, a designer may be able to build a mechanism from these ingredients. We characterize all outcomes that can arise in an equilibrium of some extensive form with some information structure. We show how to specialize our main concept to capture the additional restrictions implied by extensive‐form refinements

Whether or not to open Pandora's box

I study a single-agent sequential search problem as in Weitzman (1979). Contrary to Weitzman, conditional on stopping, the agent may take any uninspected box without first inspecting its contents. This introduces a new trade-off. By taking a box without inspection, the agent saves on its inspection costs. However, by inspecting it, he may discover that its contents are lower than he anticipated. I identify sufficient conditions on the parameters of the environment under which I characterize the optimal policy. Both the order in which boxes are inspected and the stopping rule may differ from that in Weitzman's model. Moreover, I provide additional results that partially characterize the optimal policy when these conditions fail

MAR INTERMEDIO. DESARROLLO TEÓRICO- PRÁCTICO DE UN PROYECTO DE ENSAYO AUDIOVISUAL

[EN] This Final Project revolves around the phenomenon of human displacement: the aproach to the issue is carried in two planes, theoretical and iconic, coming to meet and merge under an audiovisual format. The paper focuses primarily on concepts such as nation-state, crossing personal and others’ reflections on their visible physical boundaries, id est, about borders and social conflicts they generate. Then, encourages a dialogue between these concepts using audiovisual practice from a heuristic perspective, understanding that freedom that characterizes this film mode is the best way forward, by contrast and as politics strategy itself, to rigid and coercive forms in question.[ES] Este Trabajo Final de Grado gira en torno al fenómeno de los desplazamientos humanos: la aproximación al tema se efectúa en dos planos, teórico e icónico, que vienen a encontrarse y fundirse bajo un formato audiovisual. El trabajo profundiza en primer lugar sobre conceptos como el de estado-nación, cruzando reflexiones personales y ajenas acerca de sus delimitaciones físicas visibles, es decir, acerca de las fronteras y de los conflictos sociales que generan. Seguidamente, alienta un diálogo entre estos conceptos empleando la práctica audiovisual desde una perspectiva ensayística, entendiendo que la libertad que caracteriza esta modalidad fílmica es la mejor manera de remitir, por contraste y como estrategia política en sí misma, a las formas rígidas y coercitivas puestas en cuestión.López Doval, L. (2016). MAR INTERMEDIO. DESARROLLO TEÓRICO- PRÁCTICO DE UN PROYECTO DE ENSAYO AUDIOVISUAL. http://hdl.handle.net/10251/76229.TFG

Situational judgment test of basic employability competences development: validation of a psychoeducative instrument for socioeducative intervention

[ES] Las competencias básicas de empleabilidad, también denominadas competen-cias clave, son fundamentales para acceder, mantener y promocionar en el empleo, y son es-pecialmente relevantes en la promoción de la inserción laboral de los jóvenes desfavorecidos.En este estudio se describe el desarrollo de un instrumento psicoeducativo copyleft ba-sado en el modelo de Arnau et al. (2014) que permite a los profesionales de la pedagogía social evaluar las competencias básicas de empleabilidad en adolescentes y jóvenes de 12 a 18 años: El Test Situacional de Desarrollo de Competencias de Empleabilidad.Se diseñaron 29 situaciones-problema que se sucedían a lo largo de 5 historias de la vida cotidiana de cualquier adolescente. Se entrevistó a 102 adolescentes y jóvenes preguntándo-les cómo reaccionarían ante dichas situaciones-problema. El análisis de contenido de dichas respuestas permitió seleccionar las respuestas más frecuentes indicativas de diferentes nive-les de desarrollo competencial. 10 expertos asignaron las situaciones-problema a una de las 8 competencias propuestas por Arnau et al. (2014) y posteriormente asignaron puntuaciones de entre 0 a 5 a las diferentes respuestas en función del nivel de desarrollo que indicaban las respuestas, con altos niveles de acuerdo. Después de una aplicación piloto a un grupo de 47 jóvenes, que permitió comprobar la variabilidad de las respuestas, se administró el test a 1,011 jóvenes procedentes de 6 centros formativos. Del análisis factorial de las respuestas emergió una estructura unifactorial de 23 ítems, con valores elevados de ajuste del modelo y de la fiabilidad.Los resultados obtenidos avalan la validez de contenido, ecológica y de constructo del test DCBE recibiendo una buena aceptación tanto entre los alumnos como entre los profeso-res por su atractivo y utilidad. El test posibilita iniciar la preparación para la empleabilidad en etapas tempranas previas a la formación postobligatoria. Su carácter copyleft posibilita una amplia utilización por parte de los profesionales de la Pedagogía Social. [EN] Basic employability competences, also known as key competences, are essential in accessing, retaining and advancing in employment, and are especially relevant in promoting the employment of disadvantaged young people.This study describes the development of a copyleft psychoeducational instrument based on the model posited by Arnau et al. (2014) that Social Pedagogy professionals can use to evaluate the basic employability competences in adolescents and young people aged 12 to 18: The Situational Test of Basic Employability Competences Development (DCBE).A total of 29 problem situations were designed and included within five stories related to the daily life of any adolescent. A total of 102 adolescents and young people were interviewed and asked how they would react to these problem situations. The responses were subjected to a content analysis in order to select the most frequent responses indicative of different levels of competence development. Ten experts then assigned the problem situations to one of the eight competences proposed by Arnau et al. (2014), before assigning scores of 0 to 5 to the different responses based on the level of development indicated by the responses, with high levels of agreement.Following a pilot study on a group of 47 young people to verify the variability of the responses, the test was administered to 1,011 young people at six training centres. A factor analysis of the responses yielded a unifactorial structure of 23 items, with high values for model fit and reliability.The results obtained support the content, ecological and construct validity of the DCBE test, which was well accepted by both students and teachers for its attractiveness and use-fulness. The test makes it possible to begin preparing students for employment in the early stages prior to post-compulsory training. Its copyleft nature means it can be widely used by Social Pedagogy professionals