Subject：Generalizing Obvious Dominance Using Sure-thing Principle

Guest：Wang Wenqian, Post-doc, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (Guangzhou)

Host：Lim Xi Zhi Assistant Professor, ACEM of SJTU

Time：Wednesday, Mar 16th, 2022, 14:30-16:00

Venue：Tencent Meeting

(Please send email to yueqiwang@sjtu.edu.cn for meeting number and password.)

Abstract：

Motivated by the sure-thing principle (STP) in Savage (1954), we provide a new solution concept---STP-obvious dominance (STP-OD) equilibrium---for extensive form games in which the obviousness of the dominating strategy can be facilitated by players' application of the sure-thing principle, thereby generalizing the solution concept of obvious dominance (OD) equilibrium proposed in Li (2017). We further provide a class of solution concepts, STP-k-OD, indexed by a natural number k, capturing the manner of how STP is applied by the players, reflecting a level of sophistication. We characterize the class of gradual mechanisms which brings dynamic information feedback to direct mechanisms in a natural way, and present it as the revelation principle for STP-k-OD implementation of strategy proof social choice functions. In terms of applications, we investigate the STP-k-OD implementation of two canonical strategy proof social choice functions---top trading cycles and generalized median voting---and show how our new concepts extend the range of implementable social choice functions compared to OD implementability.

Bio：

I am working on economic theories of decision making, game, and mechanism design. I graduated from Shanghai University of Finance and Economics in 2019.