Working Papers
“Dynamic Survival Bias in Learning from Doubly Censored Data” (R&R at Journal of Economic Theory, draft available)
This paper studies the optimal inference from observing an ongoing experiment. An experimenter is fully informed and sequentially chooses whether to continue with the costly trials that yield random payoffs. My twist is that outside observers see only the recent trial results, and not the earlier prehistory. I contrast the optimal sophisticated posterior based on a full Bayesian inference that accounts for the prehistory and the naive posterior based solely on the observed history. The resulting dynamic bias grows with longer prehistory if we see enough early successes. Observing more failures may increase the sophisticated posterior if they come early. Seeing previous successes (failures) always increases (lowers) the sophisticated posterior, but seeing future failure may increase the sophisticated posterior.
“Contract Design in Self Investment Products” (with Can Sun)
This paper studies a new business model in the self-investment goods market, in which the firm proposes a two-part tariff composed of an up-front fee and a later rebate. This contract exploits consumers’ time-inconsistent preference by over-charging the up-front fee and makes profit by its crowdfunding nature.
“Hospital Runs” (with Chao He)
Hospital runs are devastating when low-risk patients crowd out high-risk ones. This paper studies a rushing game among patients. We characterize the condition of runs. There exist self-fulfilling hospital runs because seeking care early grants patients the priority in receiving treatment when their condition deteriorates. Inefficient waiting can also happen as individuals ignore the social cost of future overload. With SIR dynamics, hospital runs are triggered long before the medical resources are insufficient for high-risk patients. Many countries encourage low-risk patients to stay at home to prevents the crowd-out but, this policy is domianted by giving priority to high-risk patients.
Work in Progress
"Population Games with Strategic Substitution"
This paper studies a static population game with strategic substitutes. I assume one dimensional continuous action with heterogeneous action cost among players. I explore the diminishing cross effect condition on the payoff function, which delivers equilibrium uniqueness and several comparative statics results --- 1. The equilibrium distribution of actions level rises in the first order stochastic dominance order when the type distribution falls in the first order stochastic dominance order and the dispersion order. 2. The equilibrium distribution of actions rises when the own action effect is larger. My model has applications in games with a p2p network structure and other massive social interactions with a pairwise matching nature.
“Dynamic Survival Bias in Learning from Doubly Censored Data” (R&R at Journal of Economic Theory, draft available)
This paper studies the optimal inference from observing an ongoing experiment. An experimenter is fully informed and sequentially chooses whether to continue with the costly trials that yield random payoffs. My twist is that outside observers see only the recent trial results, and not the earlier prehistory. I contrast the optimal sophisticated posterior based on a full Bayesian inference that accounts for the prehistory and the naive posterior based solely on the observed history. The resulting dynamic bias grows with longer prehistory if we see enough early successes. Observing more failures may increase the sophisticated posterior if they come early. Seeing previous successes (failures) always increases (lowers) the sophisticated posterior, but seeing future failure may increase the sophisticated posterior.
“Contract Design in Self Investment Products” (with Can Sun)
This paper studies a new business model in the self-investment goods market, in which the firm proposes a two-part tariff composed of an up-front fee and a later rebate. This contract exploits consumers’ time-inconsistent preference by over-charging the up-front fee and makes profit by its crowdfunding nature.
“Hospital Runs” (with Chao He)
Hospital runs are devastating when low-risk patients crowd out high-risk ones. This paper studies a rushing game among patients. We characterize the condition of runs. There exist self-fulfilling hospital runs because seeking care early grants patients the priority in receiving treatment when their condition deteriorates. Inefficient waiting can also happen as individuals ignore the social cost of future overload. With SIR dynamics, hospital runs are triggered long before the medical resources are insufficient for high-risk patients. Many countries encourage low-risk patients to stay at home to prevents the crowd-out but, this policy is domianted by giving priority to high-risk patients.
Work in Progress
"Population Games with Strategic Substitution"
This paper studies a static population game with strategic substitutes. I assume one dimensional continuous action with heterogeneous action cost among players. I explore the diminishing cross effect condition on the payoff function, which delivers equilibrium uniqueness and several comparative statics results --- 1. The equilibrium distribution of actions level rises in the first order stochastic dominance order when the type distribution falls in the first order stochastic dominance order and the dispersion order. 2. The equilibrium distribution of actions rises when the own action effect is larger. My model has applications in games with a p2p network structure and other massive social interactions with a pairwise matching nature.