Lecture by Prof. Sven Rady, Bonn University, at the VWL Research Seminar on 23.04.2024

We are pleased to announce that Prof. Sven Rady, Bonn University, will give a lecture within the VWL research seminar on the topic of

"Jumping to Conclusions"

The date is Tuesday, 23.04.2024, 4 p.m., in room FG1/00.08.

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Abstract:

This talk presents a continuous-time game of strategic experimentation with two-armed bandits in which payoffs on the risky arm are generated by a compound Poisson process. The distribution of payoff increments depends on an unknown state of the world, whereas the arrival rate of such increments does not. As a consequence, players learn exclusively from the size of the lump-sum payoffs they obtain. Under perfect monitoring, the piecewise constancy of beliefs allows for an analysis of stationary Markov equilibria with essentially discrete-time techniques. In turn, these Markov equilibria constitute perfect Bayesian equilibria when players observe all payoffs, but not each other’s actions. Strongly symmetric equilibria cannot improve on the symmetric Markovian one. Whether asymmetric equilibria can achieve higher payoffs than Markovian equilibria is the focus of ongoing work.