Josh Tasoff
Department of Economics
160 East Tenth Street
Claremont, CA 91711
Email: joshua dot tasoff at cgu dot edu
CV
Research
"A Model of Attention and Anticipation" (Job Market Paper) (with Kristóf Madarász)We develop a model in which people experience standard consumption utility, as well as anticipatory utility defined as the weighted sum of independently anticipated consumption ``episodes'' or ``dimensions''. The weights on these dimensions correspond to the attention that the person pays to the dimension. We assume attention on a dimension increases when expected consumption utility in the dimension differs from expected consumption utility under the default action or the prior belief. We show that the decision maker will pay more for information about dimensions with high expected consumption utility, and the willingness to pay may be negative when expected consumption utility is low. Additionally, when expected consumption utility is sufficiently low, but not when it is high, the decision maker will follow the default action even if it is suboptimal from a consumption standpoint. Furthermore, given the decision maker's current beliefs and preferences in a dimension, he will consume more in that dimension if he just received information. We then consider an advertisement application in which a monopolist decides whether to certifiably reveal the quality of various exogenous attributes of a good to a consumer who may choose to buy or not. There exists a sequential equilibrium for which the monopolist will not disclose information for attributes in which the consumer's utility with the highest quality good is sufficiently worse than not buying the good. Competition increases disclosure.
"Placation and Provocation"
I present a simple model that explores the role of fixed costs to taking action in a strategic setting. The model is a simple extensive-form game of complete information in which two players have preferences over the realization of a policy in one dimension. The first mover has a marginal cost to change the policy and the second player has a fixed cost. The first mover may placate the second mover from action or provoke the second mover to action. The model is motivated by industrial self-regulation in which firms self-regulate to placate a regulator from taking action, and by political revolutions in which a vanguard provokes an apathetic populace into revolt. In equilibrium, the second mover may benefit from having preferences that diverge more from the first mover, and may benefit by having higher fixed costs. It is shown that the placation equilibrium of self-regulation and the provocation equilibrium of revolutions both become more robust when there are multiple first movers.
I present a simple model that explores the role of fixed costs to taking action in a strategic setting. The model is a simple extensive-form game of complete information in which two players have preferences over the realization of a policy in one dimension. The first mover has a marginal cost to change the policy and the second player has a fixed cost. The first mover may placate the second mover from action or provoke the second mover to action. The model is motivated by industrial self-regulation in which firms self-regulate to placate a regulator from taking action, and by political revolutions in which a vanguard provokes an apathetic populace into revolt. In equilibrium, the second mover may benefit from having preferences that diverge more from the first mover, and may benefit by having higher fixed costs. It is shown that the placation equilibrium of self-regulation and the provocation equilibrium of revolutions both become more robust when there are multiple first movers.
Works in Progress
"Leaks of Information" (with Omar Nayeem)
"Exponential Growth Bias and Long-Run Investment Decisions" (with Matthew Levy)
"Overestimation of Future Performance" (with Robert Letzler)
References
Botond Kőszegi (botond at econ dot berkeley dot edu)
Matthew Rabin (rabin at econ dot berkeley dot edu)
Gérard Roland (groland at econ dot berkeley dot edu)