学术前沿讲座——Information Design of a Delegated Search

报告题目

Information Design of a Delegated Search

报告人（单位）

胡震禹 (National University of Singapore)

主持人（单位）

李四杰、陈静（东南大学）

时间地点

2023年4月 25日（周二）10:00

腾讯会议：884-185-153

报告摘要和内容：

A principal delegates a sequential search in finite horizon to an agent, who bears the search cost and controls when to terminate the search. Upon termination, the search payoff is split between the principal and agent. However, only the principal can evaluate each search outcome, whose value is thus unobservable to the agent. Leveraging this informational advantage, the principal designs an information policy to strategically provide the agent with some information about the search results over time. We obtain a complete analytical characterization of the principal’s optimal policy, which is fully prescribed by a sequence of deterministic acceptance standards, one for each period. The agent is recommended and voluntarily willing to continue the search if and only if the current termination payoff fails to meet that period’s standard. In particular, the principal gradually lowers the standard over time. When the search results are not recallable, the acceptance standards are informative and determined recursively across different periods as the optimal stopping thresholds that the principal would employ should she conduct each search by herself at a shadow cost. The shadow cost signifies how difficult it is for the principal to persuade the agent to conduct the search. When the search results are recallable, the optimal policy provides no information and the agent keeps searching up to a cutoff period, after which the acceptance standard in each subsequent period is determined independently of other periods by equating the agent’s search cost with his marginal return from an additional search in that period.

报告人简介：

胡震禹，现任新加坡国立大学Department of Analytics & Operations副教授、Dean's Chair、博士生导师，MS、OR等杂志审稿人，INFORMS、 POMS杂志成员。2015年于伊利诺伊大学厄巴纳-香槟分校工业工程专业获得博士学位，2011年于中山大学数学与应用数学专业获得学士学位。目前的研究集中在研究主要集中在动态定价、收益管理、库存和供应链管理。于《Management Science》、《Operations Research》、《Journal of Mathematical Economics》、《Production and Operations Management》、《Manufacturing & Service Operations Management》等期刊上发表和录用多篇论文。