ABSTRACT: We examine an environment where goods and privately informed buyers ar-rive stochastica... more ABSTRACT: We examine an environment where goods and privately informed buyers ar-rive stochastically to a market. A seller in this setting faces a sequential allocation problem with a changing population. We characterize the set of incentive compatible allocation rules and provide a generalized revenue equivalence result. In contrast to a static setting where incentive compatibility implies that higher-valued buyers have a greater likelihood of receiving an object, in this dynamic setting, incentive compatibility implies that higher-valued buyers have a greater likelihood of receiving an object sooner. We also characterize the set of efficient allocation rules and show that a dynamic Vickrey-Clarke-Groves mechanism is efficient and dominant strategy incentive compatible. We then derive an optimal direct mechanism. We show that the revenue-maximizing direct mechanism is a pivot mechanism with a reserve price. Finally, we consider sequential ascending auctions in this setting, both wi...
The spread of COVID-19 has been a major disruptive force in people's everyday lives and mobil... more The spread of COVID-19 has been a major disruptive force in people's everyday lives and mobility behavior. The demand for on-demand ride services, such as taxis and ridehailing has been specifically impacted, given both restrictions in service operations and user's concerns about virus transmission in shared vehicles. During the pandemic, demand for these modes have decreased by as much as 80%. This study examines intentions to use on-demand ride services in a period of drastic changes in lifestyles and daily routines coupled with unprecedented mobility reductions. Specifically, we examine the determinants for the shift of intentions to use these on-demand modes of travel in the early stages of the pandemic. Using data from a survey disseminated in June 2020 to 700 respondents from contiguous United States, ordinal regression modeling is applied to analyze the shift in consideration. The results indicate that political orientation and health-related experiences during the pa...
One of the most notable global transportation trends is the accelerated pace of development in ve... more One of the most notable global transportation trends is the accelerated pace of development in vehicle automation technologies. Uncertainty surrounds the future of automated mobility as there is no clear consensus on potential adoption patterns, ownership versus shared use status and travel impacts. Adding to this uncertainty is the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic that has triggered profound changes in mobility behaviors as well as accelerated the adoption of new technologies at an unprecedented rate. This study examines the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on willingness to adopt the emerging new technology of self-driving vehicles. Using data from a survey disseminated in June 2020 to 700 respondents in contiguous United States, we perform a difference-indifference regression to analyze the shift in willingness to use autonomous vehicles as part of a shared fleet before and during the pandemic. The results reveal that the COVID-19 pandemic has a positive and highly significant impa...
Motivated by the question of how one should evaluate professional election forecasters, we study ... more Motivated by the question of how one should evaluate professional election forecasters, we study a novel dynamic mechanism design problem without transfers. A principal who wishes to hire only high-quality forecasters is faced with an agent of unknown quality. The agent privately observes signals about a publicly observable future event, and may strategically misrepresent information to inflate the principal’s perception of his quality. We show that the optimal deterministic mechanism is simple and easy to implement in practice: it evaluates a single, optimally timed prediction. We study the generality of this result and its robustness to randomization and noncommitment. (JEL C53, D72, D82)
This paper explores the role of memory in decision making in dynamic environments. We examine the... more This paper explores the role of memory in decision making in dynamic environments. We examine the inference problem faced by an agent with bounded memory who receives a sequence of signals from a hidden Markov model. We show that the optimal symmetric memory rule may be deterministic. This result contrasts sharply with Hellman and Cover (1970) and Wilson (2004) and
We examine markets in which multiple buyers with single-unit demand are faced with an infinite se... more We examine markets in which multiple buyers with single-unit demand are faced with an infinite sequence of potential transactions that occur at random times. Moreover, the set and number of buyers are not fixed throughout this sequence; instead, additional buyers may arrive probabilistically on the market in each period. Buyer valuations are independently distributed, and objects are stochastically equivalent. We
Many important economic problems have been studied with the tools of auction theory and mechanism... more Many important economic problems have been studied with the tools of auction theory and mechanism design more generally. Much of the literature, however, studies a static, one-time decision. In many problems of interest, more than a single decision needs to be made; rather, a sequence of decisions needs to be made. These decisions often depend crucially on the dynamic aspects of the environment. For example, in the classical airline revenue management problem, an airline must decide how to price seats on a flight in response to its changing inventory as well as to the evolution of the customer base. A search engine must choose
Like Western financial markets, Islamic modes of finance offer services characterized by profit-a... more Like Western financial markets, Islamic modes of finance offer services characterized by profit-and-loss sharing while also providing certain debt-based instruments. Unlike traditional capitalist modes of finance, however, Islamic finance places a unique emphasis upon the former, thus prompting many comparisons between the performance of Islamic banks and conventional ones. Given the mixed results of these studies, our paper analyzes eight banks in Malaysia offering both conventional and Islamic banking operations. Our comparison is conducted via discussions of profitability, liquidity, and asset quality. It is illustrated via this micro-level analysis that Islamic modes of finance may generally equal or surpass the quantitative measures of performance describing traditional capitalist finance systems and simultaneously encourage higher levels of social equity and economic stability in the era of financialization. JEL classification: B25, D33, D63, E44, N25
ABSTRACT: We examine an environment where goods and privately informed buyers ar-rive stochastica... more ABSTRACT: We examine an environment where goods and privately informed buyers ar-rive stochastically to a market. A seller in this setting faces a sequential allocation problem with a changing population. We characterize the set of incentive compatible allocation rules and provide a generalized revenue equivalence result. In contrast to a static setting where incentive compatibility implies that higher-valued buyers have a greater likelihood of receiving an object, in this dynamic setting, incentive compatibility implies that higher-valued buyers have a greater likelihood of receiving an object sooner. We also characterize the set of efficient allocation rules and show that a dynamic Vickrey-Clarke-Groves mechanism is efficient and dominant strategy incentive compatible. We then derive an optimal direct mechanism. We show that the revenue-maximizing direct mechanism is a pivot mechanism with a reserve price. Finally, we consider sequential ascending auctions in this setting, both wi...
The spread of COVID-19 has been a major disruptive force in people's everyday lives and mobil... more The spread of COVID-19 has been a major disruptive force in people's everyday lives and mobility behavior. The demand for on-demand ride services, such as taxis and ridehailing has been specifically impacted, given both restrictions in service operations and user's concerns about virus transmission in shared vehicles. During the pandemic, demand for these modes have decreased by as much as 80%. This study examines intentions to use on-demand ride services in a period of drastic changes in lifestyles and daily routines coupled with unprecedented mobility reductions. Specifically, we examine the determinants for the shift of intentions to use these on-demand modes of travel in the early stages of the pandemic. Using data from a survey disseminated in June 2020 to 700 respondents from contiguous United States, ordinal regression modeling is applied to analyze the shift in consideration. The results indicate that political orientation and health-related experiences during the pa...
One of the most notable global transportation trends is the accelerated pace of development in ve... more One of the most notable global transportation trends is the accelerated pace of development in vehicle automation technologies. Uncertainty surrounds the future of automated mobility as there is no clear consensus on potential adoption patterns, ownership versus shared use status and travel impacts. Adding to this uncertainty is the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic that has triggered profound changes in mobility behaviors as well as accelerated the adoption of new technologies at an unprecedented rate. This study examines the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on willingness to adopt the emerging new technology of self-driving vehicles. Using data from a survey disseminated in June 2020 to 700 respondents in contiguous United States, we perform a difference-indifference regression to analyze the shift in willingness to use autonomous vehicles as part of a shared fleet before and during the pandemic. The results reveal that the COVID-19 pandemic has a positive and highly significant impa...
Motivated by the question of how one should evaluate professional election forecasters, we study ... more Motivated by the question of how one should evaluate professional election forecasters, we study a novel dynamic mechanism design problem without transfers. A principal who wishes to hire only high-quality forecasters is faced with an agent of unknown quality. The agent privately observes signals about a publicly observable future event, and may strategically misrepresent information to inflate the principal’s perception of his quality. We show that the optimal deterministic mechanism is simple and easy to implement in practice: it evaluates a single, optimally timed prediction. We study the generality of this result and its robustness to randomization and noncommitment. (JEL C53, D72, D82)
This paper explores the role of memory in decision making in dynamic environments. We examine the... more This paper explores the role of memory in decision making in dynamic environments. We examine the inference problem faced by an agent with bounded memory who receives a sequence of signals from a hidden Markov model. We show that the optimal symmetric memory rule may be deterministic. This result contrasts sharply with Hellman and Cover (1970) and Wilson (2004) and
We examine markets in which multiple buyers with single-unit demand are faced with an infinite se... more We examine markets in which multiple buyers with single-unit demand are faced with an infinite sequence of potential transactions that occur at random times. Moreover, the set and number of buyers are not fixed throughout this sequence; instead, additional buyers may arrive probabilistically on the market in each period. Buyer valuations are independently distributed, and objects are stochastically equivalent. We
Many important economic problems have been studied with the tools of auction theory and mechanism... more Many important economic problems have been studied with the tools of auction theory and mechanism design more generally. Much of the literature, however, studies a static, one-time decision. In many problems of interest, more than a single decision needs to be made; rather, a sequence of decisions needs to be made. These decisions often depend crucially on the dynamic aspects of the environment. For example, in the classical airline revenue management problem, an airline must decide how to price seats on a flight in response to its changing inventory as well as to the evolution of the customer base. A search engine must choose
Like Western financial markets, Islamic modes of finance offer services characterized by profit-a... more Like Western financial markets, Islamic modes of finance offer services characterized by profit-and-loss sharing while also providing certain debt-based instruments. Unlike traditional capitalist modes of finance, however, Islamic finance places a unique emphasis upon the former, thus prompting many comparisons between the performance of Islamic banks and conventional ones. Given the mixed results of these studies, our paper analyzes eight banks in Malaysia offering both conventional and Islamic banking operations. Our comparison is conducted via discussions of profitability, liquidity, and asset quality. It is illustrated via this micro-level analysis that Islamic modes of finance may generally equal or surpass the quantitative measures of performance describing traditional capitalist finance systems and simultaneously encourage higher levels of social equity and economic stability in the era of financialization. JEL classification: B25, D33, D63, E44, N25
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