This SGER award will fund a young investigator as she works to develop a richer model of mechanism design. This branch of economic theory has multiple applications in labor economics, industrial economics, and public economics. Her goal is to introduce a new element into the theory; she will build and analyze a model in which a principal specifies a payment rule for several agents, but retains the ability to change the payment rule at a later date.
The award will fund the PI as she works to determine if the basic research approach is sound. Introducing non-commitment into multi-agent mechanism design should have important implications for how to otpimally design auctions, how to design efficient payment and promotion schemes, and how to develop a system of sanctions and rewards to achieve desired public policy outcomes.
