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Caltech

Bray Theory Workshop

Wednesday, October 15, 2014
4:00pm to 5:00pm
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Baxter B125
Random Choice and Private Information
Jay Lu, Assistant Professor, Department of Economics, Cornell University,

We consider an agent who chooses from a set of options after receiving some private information. This information however is unobserved by an analyst, so from the latter's perspective, choice is probabilistic or random. We provide a theory in which information can be fully identified from random choice. In addition, the analyst can perform the following inferences even when information is unobservable: (1) directly compute ex-ante valuations of option sets from random choice and vice-versa, (2) assess which agent has better information by using choice dispersion as a measure of informativeness, (3) determine if the agent's beliefs about information are dynamically consistent, and (4) test to see if these beliefs are well-calibrated or rational.

For more information, please contact Sheryl Cobb by phone at Ext. 4220 or by email at [email protected].