CTW (Contract Theory Workshop) is generally held on the third Saturday of every month, mainly in Kyoto and Osaka.  CTW mailing list distributes e-mail announcements about the workshop. Participants, please join this mailing list from here (please specify your name and affiliation). 

• Note: From April 2020 to February 2023, CTW was held in an online or hybrid format using Zoom. The online format of CTW was called  "CTWZ (Contract Theory Workshop on Zoom),"  and the schedule was posted on this website. However, since the CTW returned to a face-to-face format in principle from March 2023, the title of this homepage was changed from "CTWZ" to "CTW Schedule" (March 21, 2023). 

CTW（契約理論研究会）は、原則毎月第３土曜日に大阪または京都を中心に開催される研究会です。本研究会の連絡（懇親会の予約等）は、CTWメーリングリストで行われます。氏名と所属を明記の上、こちらからご登録をよろしくお願いいたします。

All times listed are Japan time.

Date: Saturday, January 23, 2027

• Workshop format: In-person

• Workshop venue: TBA

• Access map: TBA

• Presentation 1:  14:40 ~ 15:55 (75 minutes) 

  • Speaker: TBA

  • Title: TBA

  • Abstract: TBA

  • Language: TBA

• 20-minute break

• Presentation 2: 16:15 ~ 17:30 (75 minutes)

  • Speaker: Kohmei Makihara (Copenhagen University) 

  • Title: TBA

  • Abstract: TBA

  • Language: TBA

Date: Saturday, November 21, 2026

• Workshop format: In-person

• Workshop venue: Ibaraki Campus, Ritsumeikan University (Room details  TBA)

• Access map: https://en.ritsumei.ac.jp/file.jsp?id=246773&f=.pdf. 

• Presentation 1:  14:40 ~ 15:55 (75 minutes) 

  • Speaker: TBA

  • Title: TBA

  • Abstract: TBA 

  • Language: TBA

• 20-minute break

• Presentation 2: 16:15 ~ 17:30 (75 minutes)

  • Speaker: Yusuke Zennyo (Kobe University)

  • Title: TBA

  • Abstract: TBA

  • Language: TBA

Date: Saturday, October 17, 2026

• Workshop format: In-person

• Workshop venue: Ibaraki Campus, Ritsumeikan University (Room details  TBA)

• Access map: https://en.ritsumei.ac.jp/file.jsp?id=246773&f=.pdf. 

• Presentation 1:  14:40 ~ 15:55 (75 minutes) 

  • Speaker: TBA

  • Title: TBA

  • Abstract: TBA

  • Language: TBA

• 20-minute break

• Presentation 2: 16:15 ~ 17:30 (75 minutes)

  • Speaker: TBA

  • Title: TBA

  • Abstract: TBA

  • Language: TBA

CTW Summer Camp 2026

• Date and Time: Wednesday, August 26, 2026, 14:30 － Friday, August 28, 2026, 13:00 

• Please visit the CTW Summer Camp homepage for details.

Date: Saturday, July 18, 2026

• Workshop format: In-person

• Workshop venue: Room RY322, 3rd floor, Ryoshinkan building, Imadegawa  Campus, Doshisha University 

• Access map: https://www.doshisha.ac.jp/en/information/access/index.html 

• Presentation 1:  14:40 ~ 15:55 (75 minutes) 

  • Speaker: Wataru Tamura (Nagoya University)

  • Title:  Laplacian Eigenvector Centrality (joint work with Koya Shimono) 

  • Abstract: Networks significantly influence social, economic, and organizational outcomes, with centrality measures serving as crucial tools to capture the importance of individual nodes. This paper introduces Laplacian Eigenvector Centrality (LEC), a novel framework for network analysis based on spectral graph theory and the eigendecomposition of the Laplacian matrix. A distinctive feature of LEC is its adjustable parameter, the LEC order, which enables researchers to control and assess the scope of centrality measurement using the Laplacian spectrum. Using random graph models, LEC demonstrates robustness and scalability across diverse network structures. We connect LEC to equilibrium responses to external shocks in an economic model, showing how LEC quantifies agents' roles in attenuating shocks and facilitating coordinated responses through quadratic optimization. Finally, we apply LEC to the study of microfinance diffusion, illustrating how it complements classical centrality measures, such as eigenvector and Katz-Bonacich centralities, by capturing distinctive aspects of node positions within the network.

  • Language: Japanese

• 20-minute break

• Presentation 2: 16:15 ~ 17:30 (75 minutes)

  • Speaker: Tetsuya Hoshino (Kyoto University) 

  • Title: Rational Inattention and Endogenous Volatility: A Large Deviation Approach (joint work with Takashi Ui)

  • Abstract: Consider a game where rationally inattentive agents acquire costly information about an exogenous state and endogenous aggregate behavior. In a finite-agent game, endogenous volatility arises because individual behavior and aggregate behavior are conditionally correlated given the state. We define a large-game equilibrium as the limit of equilibria of finite-agent games with information acquisition as the number of agents approaches infinity. Our main results are: (i) Every large-game equilibrium exhibits no endogenous volatility, meaning that agents eventually learn only about the state and not about aggregate actions; (ii) The rate of convergence is such that the probability of aggregate actions deviating from the equilibrium aggregate actions decays exponentially in the number of agents. These results allow us to evaluate how accurately we can approximate games where agents can learn about both state and aggregate behavior by more tractable ones where agents learn only about state. Our proof uses large deviation theory because the law of large numbers is inapplicable when actions are correlated.

  • Language: English

Date: Saturday, June 20, 2026

• Workshop format: In-person

• Workshop venue: Room B22, 2nd Floor, Building B, Osumi Campus, Osaka University of Economics

• Access map: https://www.osaka-ue.ac.jp/_img/english/access.jpg

• Presentation 1:  14:40 ~ 15:55 (75 minutes) 

  • Speaker: Tiffany Tsz Kwan Tse (ISER, The University of Osaka)．

  • Title: Deterring Collusion with Fines in Auction Experiments (joint work with Hajime Kobayashi) 

  • Abstract: This study investigates the effectiveness of fines in deterring collusion in one-shot first-price and second-price sealed-bid auction experiments. Building on the experimental framework of Agranov and Yariv (2018), which showed that cheap-talk communication and side payments significantly increase collusion, we examine how fines influence collusion when pre-auction communication and post-auction transfers are allowed. Our experimental design introduces treatments that vary the presence of fines and the auction format. Specifically, we design four treatments: (1) a baseline with no fines in the first-price auction, (2) fines with a 25% detection probability in the first-price auction, (3) a baseline with no fines in the second-price auction, and (4) fines with a 25% detection probability in the second-price auction. The results show that introducing fines reduces collusion. Notably, fines effectively deter collusion in both weak and strong cartels. These findings enhance our understanding of how fines can be used to deter collusion in auction settings where pre-auction communication and post-auction transfers are possible.

  • Language: English

• 20-minute break

• Presentation 2: 16:15 ~ 17:30 (75 minutes)

  • Speaker: Ai Takeuchi (Ritsumeikan University)

  • Title: The effects of endowment differences on preferences over the allocation of benefits

  • Abstract：This research aims to investigate how the existence of income inequality and perceptions of its source influence people’s preferences over allocation of benefits. We conduct laboratory experiments where individuals earn different levels of income (low, middle, or high) either based on their performance in the real effort task or based on a lottery. Participants then make allocation decisions as third-party spectators: they distribute an additional surplus to be paid on top of previously assigned earnings across the three income groups other than themselves. We find that, although decisions are made as a third-party spectator and their own payoff is unaffected by the choice they make, the participants tend to choose allocations that benefit the others with the same income level. Also, people tend to make a choice that lowers income inequality (i.e., allocating more to the low-income) more when the income is determined based on the performance than when it is based on luck, but this tendency is weak compared to the effect of the difference in income.

  • Language: English

Date: Saturday, May 16, 2026

• Workshop format: In-person

• Workshop venue: Room B22, 2nd Floor, Building B, Osumi Campus, Osaka University of Economics

• Access map: https://www.osaka-ue.ac.jp/_img/english/access.jpg

• Presentation 1:  14:40 ~ 15:55 (75 minutes) 

  • Speaker: Akitoshi Muramoto (Osaka University of Economics)

  • Title: Consumer Search under Changing Tastes (joint work with Cong Pan and Takeharu Sogo) 

  • Abstract: We consider search markets where consumers' tastes may change during search, either from "hot" to "cold" or from "cold" to "hot"—consumers value products less or more after search. First, taste changes can fundamentally alter search behavior. When tastes increase sufficiently (from "cold" to "hot") relative to search costs, unlike in the case of constant tastes, consumers continue searching after finding a product with high match value and stop after finding a product with low match value. Second, while higher search costs raise equilibrium prices under constant tastes, taste changes may strengthen or weaken this effect, or even reverse it—equilibrium prices may decrease as search costs increase. Third, consumer welfare may increase with search costs when tastes change.

  • Language: Japanese

• 20-minute break

• Presentation 2: 16:15 ~ 17:30 (75 minutes)

  • Speaker: Hiroshi Kitamura (Kyoto Sangyo University)

  • Title: Manufacturers' Dilemma Falling into Exclusive-Offer Competition: A Laboratory Experiment（Hiroshi Kitamura, Noriaki Matsushima, Misato Sato, and Wataru Tamura ）

  • Abstract: We experimentally investigate exclusive-offer competition between two existing upstream firms. In theory, when upstream firms make exclusive offers to a downstream monopolist, both exclusion and non-exclusion can be equilibrium outcomes. By varying key parameters, we explore how bargaining power and product differentiation affect the likelihood of exclusion outcomes. We experimentally find that exclusion is more likely to be observed when the upstream firms have stronger bargaining power or when they produce more differentiated products; paradoxically, the higher upstream firms' profits from cooperatively offering unattractive exclusive contracts, the more likely they are to fall into intense exclusive-offer competition.　

  • Language: Japanese

Date: Saturday, April 11, 2026

• Workshop format: In-person

• Workshop venue: Rooms B515 and B516, 5th Floor,  Building B, Ibaraki Campus, Ritsumeikan University

• Access map: https://en.ritsumei.ac.jp/file.jsp?id=246773&f=.pdf. 

• Presentation 1:  14:40 ~ 15:55 (75 minutes) 

  • Speaker: Takeharu Sogo (SKEMA Business School)

  • Title: A Bright Side of Peter-Principle Promotions (Joint with Robert Dur and Kimiyuki Morita)

  • Abstract: Promotion of workers to managerial roles is often strongly based on workers' performance in their current roles rather than on their managerial aptitude. As a result, some workers end up in managerial roles despite having little managerial aptitude — a phenomenon known as the Peter principle. This paper provides a novel rationale for this apparent mismatch when promotions serve purely a matching purpose (i.e., do not serve as an incentive). We study a model in which workers care about meeting managers' expectations, and managers suffer from interpersonal projection bias: when forming expectations about workers' performance, they give too much weight to their own past performance. We show that it is in organizations' interest to appoint high-performing workers to managerial roles even if they have little managerial aptitude, because such managers will have high expectations of their workers' performance, which in turn induces high effort. 

  • Language: English

• 20-minute break

• Presentation 2: 16:15 ~ 17:30 (75 minutes)

  • Speaker: Jenny Kragl (EBS Business School)

  • Title: Image Concerns in Organizations Jenny Kragl (joint work with Hideshi Itoh)

  • Abstract: This paper presents a formal analysis of social image concerns and their motivational effects in teams and organizations. Agents are characterized by private attributes reflecting prosocial organizational orientation and individual self-orientation. Assuming that agents care about being perceived as prosocial, we derive the optimal incentive contract chosen by the principal, as well as the resulting effort, under various conditions. Image concerns give rise to reputational incentives, which are, however, attenuated by monetary incentives. Due to this trade-off, image concerns may either mitigate or exacerbate the free-rider problem. We show under which conditions organizations benefit from such organizational image concerns, which manifest themselves as positive peer effects in the workplace. We extend the model to incorporate image concerns about self-orientation and hierarchical image concerns vis-à-vis a manager. Moreover, we present a range of organizational applications of the model, including team size, team composition, team diversity, and the introduction of outsiders. We highlight the potential positive effects on firm performance as well as the related challenges and discuss practical implications for teams, organizations, and corporate culture. 

  • Language: English

Date: Saturday, March 21, 2026

• Workshop format: In-person

• Workshop venue: Rooms B515 and B516, 5th Floor,  Building B, Ibaraki Campus, Ritsumeikan University

• Access map: https://en.ritsumei.ac.jp/file.jsp?id=246773&f=.pdf.. 

• Presentation 1:  14:40 ~ 15:55 (75 minutes) 

  • Speaker: Higashi Kazuyuki (Kindai University)

  • Title: Reporting Incentives in Delegated Experimentation

  • Abstract: We study a long-term principal-agent problem involving experimentation with hidden actions. The principal delegates to the agent a costly experiment that generates decisive hard evidence about the project's quality. We assume the agent is financially constrained in exerting effort, requiring monetary transfers to cover effort costs beforehand. Since effort is unobservable, the agent can privately divert these funds for personal use (moral hazard). When the success of the experimentation is observed, the agent can conceal it to continue receiving payments without exerting effort (hidden information). The principal designs a time-dependent bonus in response to these two considerations. We show that a contract encouraging immediate reporting is more profitable than one allowing delayed reporting, and we explicitly derive the form of the optimal contract.

  • Language: English

• 20-minute break

• Presentation 2: 16:15 ~ 17:30 (75 minutes)

  • Speaker: Woo Dohui (Ritsumeikan University)

  • Title: Revision-Proof Communication in Dynamic Reputation Games

  • Abstract: In many real-world occasions, senders take back their earlier words. This paper studies a Sender-Receiver model of a reputation-for-competence concerned expert who receives multiple signals over time and can revise past messages. Once the possibility that the sender to correct earlier statements is taken into account, dynamic honest equilibrium may be fragile, as there may be a credible neologism in an extended sense, which I call a revision. I compare the supports of several dynamic and static honest equilibria without considering such possibility, and show that some dynamic honest equilibrium may not be revision-proof when the ability gap is narrowing over time. Under some conditions, neither a revision-proof dynamic equilibrium nor a static honest equilibrium exists, which implies that the Receiver cannot reliably extract all of the Sender's private information.

  • Language: English

Date: Saturday, February 21, 2026

• Workshop format: In-person

• Workshop venue: Rooms B515 and B516, 5th Floor,  Building B, Ibaraki Campus, Ritsumeikan University

• Access map: https://en.ritsumei.ac.jp/file.jsp?id=246773&f=.pdf.. 

• Presentation 1:  14:40 ~ 15:55 (75 minutes) 

  • Speaker:  Kazumi Hori (Ritsumeikan University)

  • Title: Contracts and Flexible Information Acquisition

  • Abstract: In this study, I explore a bilateral trading problem involving a buyer and a seller. Initially, the buyer’s valuation remains unknown to all parties. The buyer privately and flexibly acquires information by arranging a costly signal that correlates with their valuation. The seller’s objective is to propose contracts that incentivize the buyer to acquire information and engage in trade. The analysis reveals that a simple contract, which is independent of the buyer’s valuation distributions except for the mean, is optimal for the seller and that the buyer receives only two signals that indicate whether the good is worth buying.

  • Language: Japanese

• 20-minute break

• Presentation 2: 16:15 ~ 17:30 (75 minutes)

  • Speaker: Shunya Nuta (Kwansei Gakuin University)

  • Title: Competition with Coach (joint work with Kohei Yamagata)

  • Abstract:  This paper studies a rank-order tournament model in which potentially asymmetric agents compete for a contract by choosing costly effort. We introduce a coach who can invest in a cost-reducing technology for low-type agents, thereby lowering their marginal cost of effort. Although cost reduction enhances the productivity of low-type agents, it compresses the cost gap between types and intensifies the competition. We characterize the equilibrium and find that coaching can lower the payoff of both the principal and the agents if the cost gap between types is neither too low nor too high.　

  • Language: Japanese

Date: Saturday, January 24, 2026

• Workshop format: In-person

• Workshop venue:  Room B22, 2nd Floor, Building B, Osumi Campus, Osaka University of Economics

• Access map: https://www.osaka-ue.ac.jp/_img/english/access.jpg

• Presentation 1:  14:40 ~ 15:55 (75 minutes), 

  • Speaker: Yusuke Yamaguchi (ISER, The University of Osaka)

  • Title: Moral Hazard with a Dual-Risk-Averse Agent

  • Abstract: This paper studies a stylized moral hazard model with binary effort in which a single agent is protected by limited liability and is dual-risk-averse (DRA) in the sense of Yaari (1987). Under two-sided monotonicity of wage schedules and mild regularity conditions, I characterize the optimal contract for inducing high effort. For specific DRA preferences with natural economic interpretations, the optimal contract must take the form of a debt contract, a capped-bonus contract, or a bull-spread-like contract, i.e., a wage schedule whose slope is zero at low and high outcomes and one in an intermediate region. These results illustrate how dual risk aversion shapes the structure of optimal contracts in moral hazard environments.

  • Language: Japanese

• 20-minute break

• Presentation 2: 16:15 ~ 17:30 (75 minutes)

  • Speaker: Yasuo Takatsuki (RIEB, Kobe University)

  • Title: Complementarities between Long-Term Relationships and Short-Term Contracts: Case of Early Modern Japan (joint work with Hideshi Itoh and Takashi Shimizu)

  • Abstract: This paper examines the interaction between formal and relational enforcement in early modern Japan, focusing on financial relationships between Daimyo (regional lords) and merchants. Due to class distinctions, loans from merchants to Daimyo lacked legal enforceability, while contracts among merchants were court-enforceable. Some merchants built long-term self-enforcing relationships with Daimyo (becoming Tachiiri), whereas others provided short-term formal loans to underfunded Tachiiri. We develop a model with two markets—one that matches Daimyo with merchants, and the other that matches underfunded Tachiiri with lending merchants—and identify conditions for their co-existence in equilibrium. The analysis shows that merchants value becoming Tachiiri for long-term gains, and that the opportunities for short-term formal lending enhance the sustainability of relational contracts between Daimyo and Tachiiri.

  • Language: Japanese

Date: Saturday, November 15, 2025

• Please note that the workshop will start 40 minutes earlier than usual — at 14:00, as indicated below. 

• Workshop format: In-person

• Workshop venue: Learning Studio B276, 2nd Floor, Building B, Osaka Ibaraki Campus, Ritsumeikan University 

• Access map: https://en.ritsumei.ac.jp/file.jsp?id=246773&f=.pdf.

• Presentation 1:  14:00 ~ 15:15 (75 minutes), 

  • Speaker: Taichi Kimura (Keio University)

  • Title: Designing Calibration Committees: Size, Standards, and Rater Bias 

  • Abstract： We develop a design-based theory of calibration committees. Although committees are widely used to mitigate rater bias in subjective performance evaluation, guidance on how to choose their size and standard has been lacking. We model a firm that operates under a uniform (pooling) policy and chooses committee size and a firm-wide standard to manage evaluator favoritism. The model yields four results. First, the effect of committee size on the probability that high effort receives an adverse decision obeys simple shape restrictions: it moves monotonically or displays a single interior peak, but does not switch direction repeatedly. Second, the marginal benefit of adding members is larger under pooling than under type-specific contracts (separation), helping explain why committees are especially valuable where HR policies are uniform. Third, optimal size is finite and characterized by a transparent stopping rule that balances the marginal reduction in expected conflict cost per unit of incentive provision against per-member administrative cost. Fourth, disparities between employee types ultimately decline as committees expand, although they can temporarily widen at intermediate sizes. Taken together, these results add a design-based lens to the calibration literature and outline testable implications for future empirical work.

  • Language: Japanese

• 15-minute break

• Presentation 2: 15:30 ~ 16:45 (75 minutes)

  • Speaker: Jumpei Hamamura (Kwansei Gakuin University)

  • Title: Managerial compensation research in Japan: 

  • Abstract: This report presents an overview of our research group’s studies on managerial compensation in Japanese firms. Our group examines the disclosures in Japanese firms’ securities reports and analyzes compensation practices in conjunction with Japan’s cultural and institutional context. Using firm-level data disclosed in these reports, we observe that: (1) Japanese firms tend to align their compensation levels with those of peers; (2) fixed salaries are not entirely fixed but depend on the firm performance; (3) when firms face a decreasing in earnings, fixed salaries are reduced (harakiri); and (4) managerial target setting exhibits serial correlation, with more demanding targets associated with lower compensation levels. Our research contributes to understanding the current state of managerial compensation in Japan and offers implications for corporate governance related to regulatory frameworks. Building on these findings, we also discuss our future research agenda.

  • Language: Japanese

Date: Saturday, October 18, 2025

• Workshop format: In-person

• Workshop venue:  Room B22, Building B, Osumi Campus, Osaka University of Economics

• Access map: https://www.osaka-ue.ac.jp/_img/english/access.jpg

• Presentation 1:  14:40 ~ 15:55 (75 minutes), 

  • Speaker: Megumi Murakami (University of Tokyo)

  • Title: A leader's voice in the evolution of conventions

  • Abstract: This paper studies a pre-play announcement game where one leader makes public announcements, and individuals play a two-person and $n$-action coordination game under uncertainty. The leader's influence on the evolution of conventions is analyzed. Using the best response dynamics to study a stable convention, we show that the leader can achieve any strict Nash equilibrium in the long run. The leader needs two distinct messages to achieve his preferred outcome uniquely.

  • Language: English

• 20-minute break

• Presentation 2: 16:15 ~ 17:30 (75 minutes)

  • Speaker: Hien Pham (Hanoi National Economics University)

  • Title:  Bilateral Trade with Costly Verification

  • Abstract: We study bilateral trade where the seller privately knows the quality of the good.  Quality determines both the seller’s valuation and the buyer’s valuation, and can be costly verified.  The optimal contract trades off verification cost and incentive cost, following a  cut-off structure:  qualities below a threshold trade without verification, qualities above an upper threshold trade upon verification as long as this is socially optimal, and the remaining qualities are excluded.  Perhaps surprisingly, the introduction of the verification technology can harm market efficiency.

  • Language: English

CTW Summer Camp 2025

• Dates: Monday, August 11, 2025, 14:30-Wednesday, August 13, 11:45

• Please visit the CTW Summer Camp 2025 homepage for details.

Date: Saturday, July 19, 2025

• Workshop format: In-person

• Workshop venue: Room RY401, Ryoshinkan Building, Imadegawa Campus, Doshisha University

• Access  map: https://www.doshisha.ac.jp/en/information/access/index.html

• Presentation 1:  14:40 ~ 15:55 (75 minutes), 

  • Speaker: Hulya Eraslan (Rice University)

  • Title: Optimal Feedback Dynamics Against Free-Riding in Collective Experimentation (with Chia-Hui Chen, Junichiro Ishida, and Takuro Yamashita)

  • Abstract: We consider a dynamic model in which a principal decides what information to release about a product of unknown quality (e.g., a vaccine) to incentivize agents to experiment with the product.  Assuming the agents are forward-looking, their incentive to wait and see others' experiences poses a significant obstacle to social learning.  We show that the optimal feedback mechanism to mitigate information free-riding takes a strikingly simple form: the principal makes a binary recommendation and recommends against adoption with some probability even when she is relatively optimistic; once she recommends against adoption, she will never reverse her stance. 

  • Language: English

• 20-minute break

• Presentation 2: 16:15 ~ 17:30 (75 minutes)

  • Speaker: Robert Dur (Erasmus University Rotterdam)

  • Title: CEO Incentives and Tax Avoidance (joint work with Dirk Schindler)

  • Abstract： Why do we not see (even) more corporate tax avoidance? To rationalize this so-called 'under-sheltering puzzle', we focus on incentive systems for CEOs. We develop a simple principal-agent model and show that shareholders find it optimal to condition CEO pay partly on before-tax and partly on after-tax profits if three plausible conditions hold: the CEO is risk averse; the CEO's effort and the firm's productive capital are non-contractible and complements in production; and capital costs are not fully tax deductible. Then, a mix of before- and after-tax profit incentives gives stronger incentives to the CEO to invest, and hence, exert effort than relying on after-tax profits only. As a byproduct, the incentives of the CEO to avoid corporate taxes are weakened.

  • Language: English

Date: Saturday, June 21, 2025

• Workshop format: In-person

• Workshop venue: Room AN411 on the fourth floor of Building A, Ibaraki Campus, Ritsumeikan University

• Access map: https://en.ritsumei.ac.jp/file.jsp?id=246773&f=.pdf.. 

• Presentation 1:  14:40 ~ 15:55 (75 minutes), 

  • Speaker:  Feng Tian (The University of Hong Kong ) 

  • Title: Optimal Dynamic Contracting with Multiple Agents (with Yangge Xiao, Ping Cao and Peng Sun)

  • Abstract: Innovation often depends on the effort of multiple agents, but designing effective incentives in such environments remains a complex challenge. This study investigates how a principal can optimally coordinate and incentivize multiple agents to increase the likelihood of breakthrough innovation. We model the innovation process as a Poisson arrival, with the arrival rate determined by the collective effort levels of strategically interacting agents. This arrival rate is assumed to be concave in the total effort. In a baseline setting with two agents, we propose a strategy of rotating between the agents sequentially: the principal hires one agent with a pre-specified time interval.  If no success occurs during this interval, the principal switches to the other agent for the same duration and then back and forth between them until an overall deadline. We show that when the time interval approaches zero, this strategy is optimal (converges to an upper bound).  This rotation leverages time-limited engagement as a novel incentive mechanism, distinct from those in the existing literature. Our findings generalize to environments with more agents and offer practical guidance on using deadlines and rotation to dynamically align incentives and accelerate innovation. 

  • Language: English

• 20-minute break

• Presentation 2: 16:15 ~ 17:30 (75 minutes)

  • Speaker: Ming Li (Concordia University) 

  • Title:  The Design of Quality Disclosure Policy and the Limits to Competition (joint with Binyan Pu and Renkun Yang)

  • Abstract:  We study a two-dimensional information design problem in a duopoly with vertical differentiation. A third-party designer, literal or metaphorical, designs a public joint signal structure to reveal product quality before firms compete in prices.  The industry-optimal policy only reveals the quality ranking, which amplifies perceived differentiation, mitigates price competition, and yields socially optimal allocation. The consumer-optimal policy, to the contrary, intensifies competition by fully concealing the ranking. We further derive welfare-maximizing signal structures for arbitrary Pareto weights. Depending on the weight and the market coverage assumption, the optimal policy takes one of the following forms: ranking, no-ranking, full revelation, or a combination of full revelation with either ranking or no-ranking policies.　

  • Language: English

Date: Saturday, May 17, 2025

• Workshop format: In-person

• Workshop venue: Room B22, Building B, Osumi Campus, Osaka University of Economics

• Access map: https://www.osaka-ue.ac.jp/_img/english/access.jpg

• Presentation 1:  14:40 ~ 15:55 (75 minutes), 

  • Speaker: Hitoshi Sadakane ((Kobe University) 

  • Title: Middlemen versus Platforms: An information Economics Approach

  • Abstract: This paper examines the performance of two representative modes of intermediation that are widely used in real-life markets. In one mode, an intermediary acts as a middleman, who is specialized in buying and selling for his own account. In the other mode, an intermediary offers a platform where the participating buyers and sellers can meet and trade with each other. We show that the former mode has an informational advantage since the middleman’s action of stocking a product can signal product quality. However, a risk averse intermediary may prefer the latter mode since the platform does not need to take the risk of unsold inventory which turns out to be bad quality.

  • Language: English

• 20-minute break

• Presentation 2: 16:15 ~ 17:30 (75 minutes)

  • Speaker: Shahir Safi (New Economic School) 

  • Title: Job Market Signalling Via Social Ties.

  • Abstract: When there is asymmetric information about abilities of applicants, employees can “signal”—recommendation letter or put in a good word—some of this information to firms by recommending applicants they personally know. I consider how employees strategically transmit information to firms when there are both gratitude benefits for recommendations and reputation costs for providing inaccurate information. Unlike the classic setting of job market signalling by applicants, senders (employees) can now have imperfect information about abilities and my analysis builds upon this feature. I then develop two applications of this model which consider the strategic “selections” of ties and hiring channels by applicants. This allows me to help explain mixed evidences about the returns to using different types of ties (weak vs strong) and hiring channels (formal market vs referral), as well as the relatively higher use of referrals by low skill/ability applicants. My analysis shows that public policies aimed at more social/racial integration can help firm’s ability to screen applicants using referrals, and therefore improve efficiency of referrals as a screening mechanism.

  • Language: English

Date: Saturday, April 12, 2025

• International Contract Theory Workshop

• Please be aware that, unlike usual, the workshop will take place on the second Saturday.

• Workshop format: in-person

• Language: English

• Workshop venue: Room B22, Building B, Osumi Campus, Osaka University of Economics

• Access map: https://www.osaka-ue.ac.jp/_img/english/access.jpg

• Please visit the following site:https://forms.gle/URng9DvDmoWBVaDD7 and complete the questions on the form by March 31, 2025, if you plan to attend the workshop.

• Presentation 1:  11:00 ~ 12:00 (60 minutes)

  • Speaker: Tomoya Kazumura (Faculty of Economics, Kyoto University)

  • Title: A characterization of the minimum Walasian equilibrium price rule without quasilinearity

  • Abstract: A set of objects need to be assigned to a set of agents such that no agent gets more than one object and no object is assigned to more than one agent. Transfers are allowed and each agent’s preference over (object, payment) pair need not be quasilinear. If the domain contains all classical preferences, we show that the minimum Walrasian equilibrium price (MWEP) rule is the unique rule which satisfies strategy-proofness, ex-post individual rationality, equal treatment of equals, no wastage (every object is allocated to some agent), and no subsidy (no agent is subsidized).

• Lunch (80 minutes) 

• Presentation 2:  13:20 ~ 14:20 (60 minutes)

  • Speaker: Yu Zhou (Faculty of Economics, Nagoya University)

  • Title: Minimum price equilibrium in the assignment market: Structural properties and the Serial Vickrey mechanism

  • Abstract: We study an assignment market where multiple heterogeneous objects are sold to unit-demand agents who have general preferences that account for income effects and market frictions. The minimum price equilibrium (MPE) is one of the most important equilibrium concepts in such settings, as it demonstrates the possibility of designing efficient and strategy-proof mechanisms. Nevertheless, none of the well-known auction mechanisms that find the MPE in quasilinear settings can identify or even approximate MPEs for general preferences. We establish novel structural properties of MPEs and use these properties as the foundation to design a "Serial Vickrey (SV) mechanism." The SV mechanism finds an MPE for general preferences in a finite number of iterations. Within each iteration, each agent needs to reveal only finitely many indifferent prices, each representing her willingness to pay for a target object based on her tentatively assigned bundle. Furthermore, the SV mechanism also has desirable incentive properties.

• Break (20 minutes)

• Presentation 3:  14:40 ~ 15:55 (75 minutes)

  • Speaker: Anna Bogomolnaia (Adam Smith Business School, University of Glasgow)

  • Title: Ordinal fair division under quotas

  • Abstract:  A set A of m indivisible objects is to be fully allocated between n agents; each agent I is to get exactly q_i objects (so sum of q_i is m). Agents only report their ordinal preference orderings of single objects in A. Thus, mechanism designer can only partially compare allocations of an agent, based on stochastic dominance. 

  We look for fair and efficient allocations, using new notions of fairness “up to one upgrade”, stronger than traditional “up to one good” ones, and more appropriate for model with quotas q_i. Since individual shares’ sizes  q_i differ, fairness comparisons are based on the average valuation.

  We demonstrate that in our model, Ordinal Efficiency (“OE”, weaker condition than Pareto efficiency), and Ordinal Envy-Freeness up to one upgrade (“oEFu1”, stronger condition than cardinal one) are compatible.

  We first show that the set of OE allocations is exactly the set of allocations obtained by queueing rules. Next, we show that a “fair” queue, which guarantees oEFu1 for any preferences, exists and is essentially unique.

• Break (20 minutes) 

• Presentation 4: 16:15 ~ 17:30 (75 minutes)

  • Speaker: Hervé Moulin (Adam Smith Business School, University of Glasgow)

  • Title:  Dividing a Commons under Tight Guarantees

  • Abstract:  We revisit the “self-ownership” viewpoint to regulate the utilisation of common property resources. Allocating to each agent “the fruit of their own labor” is typically ill-defined, so we look for tight approximations of this decentralised ideal. For each agent i, two guarantees limit, from above and below, the impact of other agents on i’s allocation. They limit the range of unscripted negotiations, or the choice of a full sharing rule.      Our context-free model of the commons is a mapping W from profiles of “types” to a freely transferable amount of benefit or cost. If W is super (resp. sub) modular there is a single tight upper (resp. lower) guarantee, and an infinite menu of tight lower (resp. upper) guarantees, each one conveying a precise normative viewpoint. We describe the menu for essentially all modular two person problems, and familiar examples like the allocation of an indivisible item, cooperative production, and facility location.

•  Free Research Discussion 18:00 ~

Date: Saturday, March 8, 2025

• Please be aware that, unlike usual, the workshop will take place on the second Saturday. 

• Workshop format: in-person

• Workshop venue: Room 1004 on the 10th floor at  the Osaka Umeda campus of  Kwansei Gakuin University

• Access map:https://global.kwansei.ac.jp/about/access/campus_access 

• Presentation 1:  14:40 ~ 15:55 (75 minutes), 

  • Speaker: Akira Kawaguchi (Doshisha University) 

  • Title: Men’s Parental Leave Uptake, Not Women’s, Drives Increases in Female Managers: Evidence from Listed Companies in Japan

  • Abstract:

Background: Paid parental leave is a common policy in industrialized countries. While it often helps mothers with young children stay in the workforce, it doesn’t always lead to career advancements for women, such as better training opportunities, promotions to managerial roles, or increased representation in high-paying positions. Three key reasons are highlighted in the literature: (1) Parental leave usage can widen the gap in workplace attachment between men and women, limiting women's human capital accumulation compared to men. (2) This disparity fosters statistical discrimination against women. (3) Parental leave policies primarily used by women tend to reinforce traditional gender roles. While most studies on men’s parental leave focus on its impact on their participation in childcare and housework, this research explores its effects on women’s career advancement within the same company. Our findings indicate that increasing men’s uptake of parental leave can help mitigate the negative effects on women’s career advancement, and these benefits last several years.

Methods: We examined panel data from listed companies in Japan to test two hypotheses: (1) Higher rates of men taking parental leave lead to an increased proportion of female managers. (2) This effect lasts several years. To test these hypotheses, we applied pooled Ordinary Least Squares (OLS), Random Effects (RE), and Fixed Effects (FE) models, some of which included lagged variables for men’s parental leave uptake rates. To address sample selection bias, we used Inverse Probability Weights (IPW). We also tested endogeneity in men’s uptake rates, applying instrumental variables (IV).

Results: Our findings reveal that men’s parental leave uptake positively influences the proportion of female managers, with the strongest effects appearing four years later. Models without lagged variables reveal that a 1-percentage-point increase in men’s parental leave uptake—calculated as the number of male parental-leave users divided by male employees under 40—is associated with a 0.321 to 0.451 percentage-point rise in the proportion of female managers in pooled OLS models and a 0.243 to 0.251 percentage-point rise in RE or FE models. FE models with lagged variables indicate that the largest impact occurs four years later, with a cumulative effect over five years reaching 0.774 percentage points. 

Conclusions: The results suggest that higher rates of men taking parental leave can help close gender gaps in career advancement. Although the immediate impact on women’s promotions is modest, it grows significantly over time. This delay is understandable in large Japanese companies, where seniority-based promotion systems are prevalent. Three primary mechanisms may explain these findings: (1) Increased male parental leave uptake reduces gender gaps in work experience and human capital. (2) It mitigates statistical discrimination. (3) Challenging gender norms—such as men taking parental leave and companies encouraging them to do so—helps dismantle traditional gender roles. According to the "undoing gender" theory, this shift can reduce power imbalances and workplace inequalities associated with gender.

• • Language: Japanese

• 20 minutes break

• Presentation 2: 16:15 ~ 17:30 (75 minutes)

  • Speaker: Hideshi Itoh (Waseda Business School, Waseda University) 

  • Title: The Allocation of Decision Authority Revisited: A Simple Analysis of Three-Stage Decision Processes (joint with Kimiyuki Morita)

  • Abstract: We study a three-stage decision process that consists of information acquisition, project choice, and execution of the selected project. The organization that consists of a principal and an agent chooses and implements a proactive project. The agent chooses a costly effort at the information acquisition stage, that increases the probability of learning feasible projects. The agent also chooses a costly effort at the execution stage, that increases the probability that the selected project is successfully implemented. What the principal can do at the beginning is the allocation of the formal decision authority over project choice, either to herself or the agent. We show that the principal is more likely to delegate authority to the agent under the three-stage decision process than under the reduced, two-stage decision process where the execution stage is exogenously fixed. We further show that if information acquisition is exogenously fixed and thus the decision process consists only of project choice and implementation, the principal has no reason to empower the agent.

  • Language: Japanese

Date: Saturday, February 15, 2025

• Workshop format: in-person

• Workshop venue: Room 1408 on the 14th floor at  the Osaka Umeda campus of  Kwansei Gakuin University

• Access  map:https://global.kwansei.ac.jp/about/access/campus_access 

• Presentation 1:  14:40 ~ 15:55 (75 minutes), 

  • Speaker: Kyota Eguchi (Chuo University) 

  • Title: Occupational choice in a unionized economy

  • Abstract: As economy has grown, the primary form of work has shifted from the non-employment form, self-employment and independent contractors, to the employment form, employees. This article illustrates this stylized fact through a model of occupational choice in a unionized economy. We show that more unionization increases self-employment but decreases employees. As economy grows, self-employment emerges first, followed by employment. As the economy continues to grow, the number of self-employed decreases and the number of employers and employees increases. Finally, self-employment disappears and the number of employees increases while the number of employers decreases: Firm size is growing.

  • Language: Japanese

• 20 minutes break

• Presentation 2: 16:15 ~ 17:30 (75 minutes)

  • Speaker: Tadashi Sekiguchi (KIER, Kyoto University) 

  • Title: Asymmetric Cooperation Schemes and Rotation Equilibria in Repeated Games（非対称協力スキームと繰り返しゲームにおける輪番均衡）

  • Abstract: 対称的な経済環境において、人々が違う行動を選ぶ方が何らかの意味で好ましい場合がある。効率的な結果の達成可能性を分析する繰り返しゲームの枠組みで、非対称行動プロファイルが総ステージ利得を最大化する状況などである。収穫逓減が強く働くチーム生産モデルはその一例だし、入札談合もそんな状況の一つである。本研究はこのような繰り返しゲームのクラスにおいて、輪番均衡、すなわち総ステージ利得を最大化する非対称行動プロファイル群を順繰りにプレーする均衡について、総利得最大化を達成する他の均衡と比較しながら分析する。主要な結果は、総利得最大化が均衡として達成できる割引因子の範囲が、輪番均衡が成立する割引因子の範囲と一致するという意味で、輪番均衡が代表的均衡となる十分条件の導出である。この結果は、世の中でしばしば制度化・慣習化している輪番制について、その意義をインセンティブという側面から補強している。また、輪番均衡が代表的均衡とならない環境において、輪番制をどのように修正すれば代表的均衡が得られるか、などを検討する。

  • Language: Japanese

Date: Saturday, January 11, 2025

• Please be aware that, unlike usual, the workshop will take place on the second Saturday. 

• Workshop format: in-person

• Workshop venue: Room B22, Building B, Osumi Campus, Osaka University of Economics

• Access map: https://www.osaka-ue.ac.jp/_img/english/access.jpg

• Presentation 1:  14:40 ~ 15:55 (75 minutes), 

  • Speaker: Shingo Ishiguro (Osaka University) 

  • Title: Addiction and Illegal Markets

  • Abstract: This paper studies dynamic contracts in illegal addictive markets where individuals' tastes for addictive goods develop through prolonged consumption and contract enforcement is limited. Our theoretical analysis uncovers the optimality of a `free-first-dose' strategy where sellers intensify buyers' addiction by offering consumption credit to newcomers.  We show that buyers default a certain portion of the debts for early period consumption but are never imposed any penalty on the equilibrium path.  This implies that illegal markets might favor non-violent interactions over violent ones, defying the stereotypical association of illegality with violence. Meanwhile, in illegal gambling markets, a distinct equilibrium phenomenon known as the long-shot bias emerges due to the influence of addiction, illustrating another complex dynamic within these markets. We discuss the implications of the model in the context of illegal sports wagering, narcotics, and religious sects.

  • Language: English 

• 20 minutes break

• Presentation 2: 16:15 ~ 17:30 (75 minutes)

  • Speaker: Wing Suen (University of Hong Kong) 

  • Title:  Coarse information design

  • Abstract: We study an information design problem with continuous state and discrete signal space. Under convex value functions, the optimal in- formation structure is interval-partitional and exhibits a dual expectations property: each induced signal is the conditional mean (taken under the prior density) of each interval; and each interval cutoff is the conditional mean (taken under the value function curvature) of the interval formed by neighboring signals. This property enables an examination into which part of the state space is more finely partitioned. The analysis can be extended to general value functions and adapted to study coarse mechanism design.  

  • Language: English 

Date: Saturday, December 7, 2024 

• The 15th East Asia Theory Conference is held this year at the University of Hong Kong. It is scheduled to be a one-day event on December 7, 2024 (Saturday), featuring eight presentations on microeconomic theory from scholars in this region.  The preliminary program is available at:  https://www.hkubs.hku.hk/eventsite/2024-east-asia-theory-conference/. The page also contains a link for you to register to attend this conference.  Registration is free, and registered attendees can join our conference lunch and dinner.  We encourage you to REGISTER for this conference by visiting the above-mentioned webpage.  This will allow the conference organizers to arrive at better estimates for the logistics.  Organizers and speakers at the conference are automatically registered and there is no need to take further action. 

Date: Saturday, November 16, 2024

• Workshop format: in-person

• Workshop venue: Room B22, Building B, Osumi Campus, Osaka University of Economics

• Access map: https://www.osaka-ue.ac.jp/_img/english/access.jpg

• Presentation 1:  14:40 ~ 15:55 (75 minutes), 

  • Speaker: Shunsuke Hanato（Osaka University of Economics)

  • Title: Final-Offer Arbitration with Reference-Dependent Preferences

  • Abstract: When negotiators cannot reach an agreement by themselves, arbitration is often used to resolve conflicts. In this study, we focus on final-offer arbitration (FOA). Under FOA, each negotiator submits a final offer, and an arbitrator decides one of these offers as a final outcome. It is considered that FOA encourages negotiators to reach an agreement by themselves before arbitration. However, negotiators often proceed to arbitration process in reality. We analyze why and when negotiators proceed to FOA by introducing reference-dependent preferences. In our model, each negotiator incurs some cost if his final offer is rejected by an arbitrator. We find that if both negotiators feel high costs, they prefer to reach an agreement by themselves. On the other hand, if at least one negotiator feels a sufficiently low cost, the negotiators proceed to FOA. The negotiator with a low cost uses FOA for ``gambling'' on the possibility that an arbitrator accepts his offer.

  • Language: Japanese

• 20 minutes break

• Presentation 2: 16:15 ~ 17:30 (75 minutes)

  • Speaker: Takakazu Honryo (Doshisha University)

  • Title: Delegation in Teams

  • Abstract: This study considers delegation of a decision within a team of informed agents. It shows under what conditions formal decision-making authority should be delegated and identifies the individuals to whom such authority should be conferred. This determination hinges on a trade-off between 1) enhanced communication when the delegated agent's preferences are closely aligned with those of the other agents, and 2) the costs incurred from distorted decisions arising due to biased preferences of the delegated agent.

  • Language: Japanese

Date: Saturday, October 12, 2024

• Please be aware that, unlike usual, the workshop will take place at the Umeda campus (KANDAI Me RISE)  of Kansai University on the second Saturday. 

• Workshop format: in-person

• Workshop venue: Room 701, Umeda Campus (KANDAI Me Rise), Kansai University 

• Access map: English map, Japanese map

• Presentation 1:  14:40 ~ 15:55 (75 minutes), 

  • Speaker: Kimiyuki Morita (Senshu University)

  • Title: Optimal Contracts Under Interpersonal Projection (joint with Akitoshi Muramoto and Takeharu Sogo)

  • Abstract: We study a multi-agent moral hazard model in which each agent implements a task and exhibits interpersonal projection bias, perceiving their peers’ abilities as similar to their own. Agents have private information about their own task-specific ability. We characterize optimal contracts with limited liability that induce effort from agents whose ability exceeds a given cutoff. If the cutoff is sufficiently low (high), relative (resp. joint) performance evaluation is optimal when individual outcomes are contractible, despite the absence of common shocks and informational or technological externalities. Exploiting the agents’ biases, the principal saves expected wages. Conversely, when only joint outcomes are contractible, optimal wages may increase with the degree of projection bias.

  • Language: English

• 20 minutes break

• Presentation 2: 16:15 ~ 17:30 (75 minutes)

  • Speaker: Nick Zubanov (University of Konstanz)

  • Title: Is This Really Kneaded? Identifying and Eliminating Potentially Harmful Forms of Workplace Control (with Guido Friebel, Matthias Heinz, Mitchell Hoffman,  and Tobias Kretschmer)

  • Abstract:  In a large German bakery chain, many workers report negative perceptions of monitoring via checklists. We survey workers and managers about the value and time costs to all in-store checklists, leading the firm to randomly remove two of the most perceivedly time-consuming and low-value checklists in half of stores. Sales increase and store manager attrition substantially decreases, and this occurs without a rise in measurable workplace problems. Before random assignment, regional managers predict whether the treatment would be effective for each store they oversee. Ex post, beneficial effects of checklist removal are fully concentrated in stores where regional managers predict the treatment will be effective, reflecting substantial heterogeneity in returns that is well-understood by these upper managers. Effects of checklist removal do not appear to come from workers having more time for production, but rather coincide with improvements in employee trust and commitment. Following the RCT, the firm implemented firmwide reductions in monitoring, eliminating a checklist regarded as demeaning, but keeping a checklist that helps coordinate production.

  • Language: English

CTW Summer Camp 2024

• Dates: Tuesday, August 20, 2024, 14:00 - Thursday, August 22, 2023, 12:30

• Please visit the homepage of CTW Summer Camp for details.

Date: Saturday, July 20, 2024

• Please be aware that the first presentation will start earlier than usual, as detailed below. 

• Workshop format: in-person

• Workshop venue: 2nd Lecture Room on the 4th floor of Campus Plaza Kyoto

• Access map: https://www.consortium.or.jp/en/about-cp-kyoto/access 

• Presentation 1: 14:15~15:30 (75 minutes)　

  • Speaker: Shuichi Tsugawa (Ryukoku University)

  • Title: Voluntary provision of durable public goods under present-bias and time inconsistency

  • Abstract: TBA

  • Language: English

• 20 minutes break

• Presentation 2: 15:45~17:00 (75 minutes), 

  • Speaker: Yu Awaya (University of Rochester)

  • Title: Spreading Information via Social Networks: An Irrelevance Result (with Vijay Krishna)

  • Abstract: An informed planner wishes to spread information among a group of agents in order to induce efficient coordination---say the adoption of a new technology with positive externalities. The agents are connected via a social network. The planner informs a seed and then the information spreads via the network. While the structure of the network affects the rate of diffusion, we show that the rate of adoption is the same for all acyclic networks.

  • Language: English

• The workshop in July 2024 is co-hosted by Kyoto Sangyo University

Date: Saturday, June 15, 2024

• Workshop format: in-person

• Workshop venue: Room B22, Building B, Osumi Campus, Osaka University of Economics

• Access map: https://www.osaka-ue.ac.jp/_img/english/access.jpg

• Presentation 1:  14:40 ~ 15:55 (75 minutes), 

  • Speaker: Fumitoshi Moriya (Kobe City University of Foreign Studies)

  • Title: An Optimal Structure of Help

  • Abstract: TBA

  • Language: Japanese

• 20 minutes break

• Presentation 2: 16:15 ~ 17:30 (75 minutes)

  • Speaker: Shigehiro Serizawa (Osaka University of Economics)

  • Title: Efficiency, fairness, and strategy-proofness in constrained package assignment problems with money (with Hiroki Shinozaki) 

  • Abstract:  We consider the constrained package assignment problem with money where the set of admissible object allocations is restricted by a given constraint. Each agent receives a package of objects, and has a (possibly) non-quasi-linear preference on the set of pairs consisting of a package and a payment.

  First, we show that there is a rule satisfying constrained efficiency, anonymity in welfare, and strategy-proofness if and only if the constraint is a bundling unit-demand constraint. Then, we establish that a rule satisfies constrained efficiency, anonymity in welfare, strategy-proofness, individual rationality, and no subsidy if and only if (i) the constraint is a bundling unit-demand constraint, and (ii) the rule is a bundling minimum price Warlasian rule associated with the constraint. We further show that our results remain true even if we replace anonymity in welfare by no envy. Our results indicate that the bundling unit-demand property is not only sufficient but also necessary for a constraint to admit the existence of a rule satisfying (constrained) efficiency, fairness, and strategy-proofness in a constrained package assignment model with money for non-quasi-linear preferences.

• • Language: Japanese

Date: Saturday, May 18, 2024

• Workshop format: in-person

• Workshop venue: Room B22, Building B, Osumi Campus, Osaka University of Economics

• Access map: https://www.osaka-ue.ac.jp/_img/english/access.jpg

• Presentation 1:  14:40 ~ 15:55 (75 minutes), 

  • Speaker: Hayato Kanayama (Waseda University)

  • Title: The Value of Drinking Bosses: Evidence from a Large Manufacturing Company (with Yuji Kawata and Ritsu Kitagawa) 

  • Abstract: We estimate employee returns to socializing with drinking bosses on their career. We leverage administrative data consisting of personnel records and annual health check results provided by a large manufacturing company and exploit quasi-random variations in boss switches driven by periodic personnel transfers across divisions.  Our findings suggest that when male employees start reporting to a drinking boss, their annual salary increases by 2.7–3.6 percent and promotion likelihood increases by 33–58 percent over the following 8 years. We find no evidence for the drinker-to-drinker advantage. Namely, we do not find any clear differences in the effects between drinking and non-drinking male employees.

  • Language: TBA

• 20 minutes break

• Presentation 2: 16:15 ~ 17:30 (75 minutes)

  • Speaker: Takuma Kamada (OSIPP, Osaka University)

  • Title: Blessing or Curse for Organized Crime? The Long-Term Effects of an Energy Transition from Coal to Oil on the Yakuza

  • Abstract:  This study investigates the long-term effects of a negative labor demand shock in the coal mining industry on the supply of organized crime. The setting is Japanese criminal organizations called the yakuza. In the 1960s, an energy transition from coal to oil diminished coal mining jobs, thereby depriving mining-associated yakuza, previously involved as labor brokers or protection racketeers, of revenues. I show that, in the short run, following the energy transition, yakuza arrests increased in coal-rich areas, a finding that cannot be explained by changes in enforcement levels. The immediate increase in yakuza-involved crime is likely due to mining yakuza shifting their economic criminal activities, rather than coal miners joining yakuza organizations. As mining yakuza's power waned, non-mining yakuza gained prominence, shifting the yakuza power dynamics. Consequently, conflicts among different yakuza organizations intensified in coal-rich areas, which persisted for over half a century. Today, areas with greater mining job loss due to the energy transition are characterized by a greater number of yakuza members and yakuza organizations. These areas also experienced juvenile delinquency in the medium and long run, hinting at the new labor supply for the yakuza, which may explain the persistent effect. Taken together, this study reveals that a labor demand shock can have long-lasting effects on organized crime.

  • Language: English

Date: Saturday, April 20, 2024

• Workshop format: in-person

• Workshop venue:  Room AS358, on the 3rd floor of Building A,  Osaka Ibaraki Campus, Ritsumeikan University

• Access map:  https://en.ritsumei.ac.jp/file.jsp?id=246773&f=.pdf.. 

• Presentation 1:  14:40 ~ 15:55 (75 minutes), 

  • Speaker: Shintaro Miura (Kanagawa University)

  • Title: Minimal Prep Correspondence as Sharp Robust Prediction (with Takuro Yamashita)

  • Abstract: We consider a robust prediction in games where the true information structure for payoff-relevant parameters is uncertain. A robust prediction is defined by a set of action profiles containing a plausible Bayesian Nash equilibrium for any admissible information structures. We show the equivalence between a sharp robust prediction and a minimal prep correspondence, which is a subset of action profiles characterized by the product structure and the best-reply property. We then show that it is sufficient to focus on the canonical type space, a Harsanyi type space constructed as an analogy of level-k theory, for deriving a sharp robust prediction with respect to baseline prediction. As applications of our approach, we derive the constrained sharp robust predictions in Cournot competition, Diamond search games, and auctions.

  • Language: English

• 20 minutes break

• Presentation 2: 16:15 ~ 17:30 (75 minutes)

  • Speaker: Benson Tsz Kin Leung (Hong Kong Baptist University)

  • Title: Distracted from Comparison: Product Design and Advertisement with Limited Attention (with Johannes Johnen)

  • Abstract: We study how firms choose designs－of products or information－to direct consumers' limited attention. Consumers with limited attention either study fewer products carefully to learn match values, or supercially browse prices of more products. We highlight a novel distraction effect: to distract consumers from price-comparison, firms combine larger prices with designs that disperse match values. Thus, firms disclose excessively-detailed product information: information improves matches, but distracts consumers from price-comparison, relaxing competition. Interventions that make information coarser and easily-available－e.g. front-package-food labels like nutriscores－increase competition and consumer surplus. Our results connect evidence on various informational interventions.

  • Language: English

Date: Saturday, March 16, 2024

• Workshop format: in-person

• Workshop venue: Room 1405 on the 14th floor at  the Osaka Umeda campus of  Kwansei Gakuin University

• Access: https://global.kwansei.ac.jp/about/access/campus_access

  • Presentation 1:  14:40 ~ 15:55 (75 minutes), 

    • Speaker: Junichiro Ishida (ISER, Osaka University)

    • Title: Overcoming Free-Riding in Collective Experimentation: A Dynamic Model of Feedback-Based Information Release (with Chia-Hui Chen, Hulya Eraslan, and Takuro Yamashita)

    • Abstract: We consider a dynamic model in which a benevolent principal decides what information to release about a product of unknown quality (e.g., a vaccine) to incentivize agents to experiment with the product.  Assuming that the agents are long-lived and forward-looking, their incentive to free-ride on other agents' experiments poses a major obstacle to social learning.  In the environment where information arrives in the form of bad news (a ``breakdown''), we show that the optimal feedback mechanism to mitigate free-riding takes a strikingly simple form: she recommends adoption as long as she observes no bad news, but only with some probability; once she does not recommend at some point, then she stays silent forever after that.  Our analysis suggests the optimality of premature termination, which in turn implies that: (i) false positives (termination in the good state) are more acceptable than false positives (continuation in the bad state); (ii) overly cautious mechanisms that are biased toward termination can be welfare-enhancing.

    • Language: English

  • 20 minutes break

  • Presentation 2: 16:15 ~ 17:30 (75 minutes)

    • Speaker: Katsuya Takii (OSIPP, Osaka University)

    • Title (tentative): The Role of Coarse Information on the Success Probability in College Application Behavior

    • Abstract (tentative):  This paper examines whether people can be inattentive in the face of once-in-a-lifetime events.  Using data at Japanese entrance examination, we show that even in situations where it is immediately understandable that there is no significant change in the actual likelihood of acceptance, candidates will change their school of choice simply because the label that broadly describes the likelihood of acceptance changes. In order to understand the mechanism behind this result, we model the application decision of students with inattention.  The results suggest that people seem to observe information relatively carefully because the attribute importance is large, although they cannot be completely attentive even in once-in-a-lifetime situations. The results also suggest that people who are better able to process information and who are accustomed to processing more information on a daily basis pay more attention to information when faced with a once-in-a-lifetime event.

    • Language: English

The 45th

• Date: Saturday, February 17, 2024

• Workshop format: in-person

• Workshop venue: Room B275 or B276, on the 2nd floor of Building B,  Osaka Ibaraki Campus, Ritsumeikan University 

  • Access map:  https://en.ritsumei.ac.jp/file.jsp?id=246773&f=.pdf.. 

  • Presentation 1:  14:40 ~ 15:55 (75 minutes), 

    • Speaker: Harry Pei (Northwestern University)

    • Title: Community Enforcement with Endogenous Records

    • Abstract: I study repeated games with anonymous random matching where players can erase signals from their records. When players are sufficiently long-lived and have strictly dominant actions, they will play their dominant actions with probability close to one in all equilibria. When players’ expected lifespans are intermediate, there exist purifiable equilibria with a positive level of cooperation in the submodular prisoner’s dilemma but not in the supermodular prisoner’s dilemma. Therefore, the maximal level of cooperation a community can sustain is not monotone with respect to players’ expected lifespans and the complementarity in players’ actions can undermine their abilities to sustain cooperation.

    • Language: English

  • 20 minutes break

  • Presentation 2: 16:15 ~ 17:30 (75 minutes)

    • Speaker: Yuta Yasui (Kochi University of Technology)

    • Title:  Controlling Fake Reviews

    • Abstract: This paper theoretically analyzes fake reviews on a platform market using models where a seller creates fake reviews through incentivized transactions, and its sales depend on its rating based on a review history. The platform can control the incentive for fake reviews by changing the parameters of the rating system, such as weights placed on old and new reviews and its filtering policy. At equilibrium, the number of fake reviews increases as quality increases but decreases as reputation improves. Since fake reviews have a positive relationship with a product’s underlying quality, rational consumers find a rating more informative when fake reviews exist, while credulous consumers suffer from a bias caused by boosted reputation. A stringent filtering policy can decrease the expected amount of fake reviews and the bias of credulous consumers, but at the same time, it can decrease the informativeness of a rating system for rational consumers. In terms of the weight placed on the review history, rational consumers benefit from higher weights on past reviews than from optimal weights without fake reviews.

    • Language: English

The 44th

• Date: Saturday, January 20, 2024

• Workshop format: in-person

• Workshop venue: Room B22, Building B, Osumi Campus, Osaka University of Economics

  • Access map: https://www.osaka-ue.ac.jp/_img/english/access.jpg

• Presentation 1:  14:40 ~ 15:55 (75 minutes), 

  • • Speaker: Takashi Shimizu  (Kobe University)　

    • Title: On the Combination of Biased Members

    • Abstract:  We consider the information transmission problem within organization, and especially we focus on how to combine biased subordinates to elicit truthful information from them. We assume that the directions of subordinates' biases are common knowledge, but not their sizes. This leads to the results that homogeneous combination of subordinates are better than heterogeneous one. This is because in the case of homogeneous subordinates, the effect of one's false report might be accelerated by another false report and this anxiety reduces an incentive for Subordinates to send a false report.

    • Language: English

  • 20 minutes break

  • Presentation 2: 16:15 ~ 17:30 (75 minutes)

    • Speaker: Tomoya Tajika ( Nihon University)

    • Title:  Evolution of Information Projection Bias through Costly Communication in OLG Organizations

    • Abstract:  In organizations with overlapping generations, behavioral bias affects performance through promotion decisions. This study focuses on information projection bias and examines its effects on communication efforts and the overall performance of an organization adopting a performance-based promotion system to select the next-generation manager among current subordinates. We show that the bias generally disrupts communication between an incumbent manager and subordinates and that the expected overall performance is single-peaked with respect to the manager's bias. When considering the bias distribution among newly promoted managers, we find that a more biased group is likely to select a more biased manager, and this trend becomes stronger over generations when the variety of the bias degree is restricted. Additionally, when communication efforts are complements, the expected overall performance increases if the manager's bias is highly sufficient. By contrast, when the variety of the bias degree is sufficient, the manager's bias diminishes over generations. Nonetheless, the overall performance decreases in a large organization. Our results contribute to an understanding of the effects of diversity in an organization on its performance.

    • Language: English

The 43rd

• Date: Saturday, November 18, 2023

• Workshop format: in-person

• Workshop venue: Room AN316  on the 3rd floor of Building A,  Osaka Ibaraki Campus, Ritsumeikan University 

• Access map:  https://en.ritsumei.ac.jp/file.jsp?id=246773&f=.pdf.. 

• Presentation 1:  14:40 ~ 15:55 (75 minutes), 

  • Speaker:  Shingo Ishiguro (Osaka University)

  • Title: Relational Contracts and Subjective Evaluation with Endogenous Wealth Accumulation 

  • Abstract: This paper studies relational contracts with the moral hazard problem constrained by subjective evaluation and risk sharing: a risk averse principal and a risk averse agent engage in a long-term relationship in which the agent chooses unobservable actions while the principal privately observes agent's performance　 in each period.   In contrast to the previous literature about relational contracts with subjective evaluation, we allow the contracting parties to accumulate wealth endogenously over time by private  savings/borrowings.  We then present a new insight that endogenous wealth accumulation can mitigate the efficiency loss of subjective evaluation in dynamic contracting.  More specifically,  we show that all the problems of moral hazard, risk sharing and subjective evaluation can be approximately resolved in the limit as players become sufficiently patient and interest rates go to zero.  We also show that an equilibrium contract resembles the company-sponsored savings plans commonly used in practice. 

  • Language: English

• 20 minutes break

• Presentation 2: 16:15 ~ 17:30 (75 minutes)

  • Speaker:  Takashi Onoda (Japan Bank for International Cooperation)

  • Title: Gradual Development and Rough Transition of Cooperation with Reference Dependence

  • Abstract: I study cooperation among reference-dependent and loss-averse players in a dynamic game with complete information. Every period, players choose their cooperation levels that determine their intrinsic payoffs and update their reference points in a backward-looking way. I characterize the subgame-perfect equilibrium that maximizes the utility with Nash reversion and show that the development of cooperation exhibits gradualism. After initiating cooperation, players experience higher payoffs than their initial reference points. Consequently, the reference points rise, making a penalty more severe for a deviation and enabling further cooperation. This paper additionally illustrates how the developed cooperation responds to a structural shock. When a steady-state cooperation level shifts down, transitioning to the new level entails a loss. This loss generates an additional deviation incentive, and the players undergo cooperation lower than the new steady-state level.

  • Language: English

The 42nd

• Date: Saturday, October 21, 2023

• Time: 16:00 ~ 17:30 

• Workshop format: in-person

• Workshop venue: Room B22, Building B, Osumi Campus, Osaka University of Economics

• Access map: https://www.osaka-ue.ac.jp/_img/english/access.jpg

• Presenter: Takuro Yamashita (Osaka University)

• Presentation title: A Mediator Approach to Mechanism Design with Limited Commitment (with Niccolo Lomys)

• Abstract: We study mechanism design with limited commitment. In each period, a principal offers a (possibly long-term) contract to a privately informed agent without committing to future contracts. We reformulate this problem as a dynamic mechanism design problem with full commitment and endogenous outside options. In the durable-good monopoly application, we characterize the seller-optimal equilibrium trade dynamics, which is quite different from the classical Coase conjecture dynamic: in the seller-optimal equilibrium, the seller offers a discount to the high-valuation buyer in the initial period, followed by the high surplus-extracting price until an endogenous deadline, at which point the buyer's information is revealed without noise (as opposed to the gradual price decrease in the Coasian dynamic). In particular, the Coase conjecture fails and the seller earns a strictly positive rent.

• Language: English

CTW Summer Camp 

• Dates: Thursday, August 17, 2023, 14:00 - Saturday, August 19, 2023, 12:30

• See the homepage of CTW Summer Camp for detail.

The 41th

• Date: Saturday, July 8, 2023

• Time: 16:00 ~ 17:30 

• Workshop format: in-person

• Workshop venue: Room G44, Building G, Osumi Campus, Osaka University of Economics

• Access map: https://www.osaka-ue.ac.jp/_img/english/access.jpg

• Presenter: Yu Aawaya (University of Rochester)

• Presentation title: Rational Exuberance and Bubbles 

• Abstract: We study a model of dynamic adverse selection in which a large group of sellers sell an asset of uncertain quality to a larger group of buyers. The quality is known to the sellers but unknown to the buyers. There is, however, the possibility that if the asset is of low quality, this will be revealed via public news at a random time. We show that there is a unique equilibrium satisfying forward induction. In this equilibrium a bubble develops. Even a worthless asset is traded at rapidly increasing prices. This is because in the absence of bad news, buyers become more and more optimisticó they exhibit rational exuberance.

• Language: Japanese

The 40th

• Date: Saturday, June 17, 2023

• Time: 16:00 ~ 17:30 

• Workshop format: in-person

• Workshop venue: Room E61, Building E, Osumi Campus, Osaka University of Economics

• Access map: https://www.osaka-ue.ac.jp/_img/english/access.jpg

• Presenter: Atsushi Ohyama (Hitotsubashi University)

• Presentation title: Business Expectations, Forecast Errors, and Firm Performances in an Interconnected Economy 

• Abstract: Business expectations and uncertainty have received a great deal of attention from both micro- and macro-economists recently. Several empirical studies demonstrate that business expectations and uncertainty have real impacts on the performance and resource allocation of both firms and the whole economy (Bloom, 2009; David et al., 2016; Massenot and Pettinicchi, 2018; Tanaka et al., 2019). However, it remains silent on whether and how the formation of a firm’s business expectation is affected by the business expectations of other firms and how business expectations and forecast errors affect firm performance when they are connected to each other through business transaction networks. We create a novel data set that merges sources on business expectations, forecast errors, and transaction partners of firms to examine these issues. Our main findings are summarized as follows. First, business expectations are positively correlated to the number of transaction partners after several factors are controlled for. Firms with many transaction partners tend to expect high firm growth. Second, a firm’s forecast error about firm growth is positively correlated with the forecast errors of its transaction partners. Forecast errors transmit through transaction relationships. Third, firms with many transaction partners and/or stable transaction relationships tend to reduce forecast errors. We thus observe portfolio effects. Finally, when actual growth is smaller than forecasted growth, firms with large forecast errors are unable to increase the number of new transaction partners. On the other hand, when actual growth exceeds forecasted growth, firms with large forecast errors are likely to reorganize their transaction partners.

• Language: English

The 39th

• Date: Saturday, May 20, 2023

• Time: 16:00 ~ 17:30

• Workshop format: in-person

• Workshop venue: The 3rd floor lecture room of the Kitahama Campus of Osaka University of Economics on the 3rd floor of the Osaka Exchange  

• Access map: https://goo.gl/maps/4CUqBphcKX6xcppJA

• Presenter: Takanori Adachi (Kyoto University)

• Presentation title: Cournot Platform Competition with Mixed-Homing (coauthored with M.J. Tremblay with S. Sato) 

• Abstract: Competition in quantity dates back to Cournot (1838) for traditional markets and Katz and Shapiro (1985) for markets with direct network e ects. In this paper, we consider Cournot platform competition in two-sided markets with indirect network ef- fects while allowing for single-, multi-, and mixed-homing allocations. We nd that the markup and markdown terms that are typically found in monopoly two-sided pricing are distorted toward zero when platform competition intensifies. We also generalize the monopoly platform Lerner indices from Armstrong (2006) and Weyl (2010) to include competition and mixed-homing allocations. Lastly, we show that welfare decreases in the number of platforms for the most commonly considered homing allocations high- lighting how the welfare loss from breaking up a network across smaller platforms can outweigh the welfare benefits from lower aggregate prices in a setting where platforms are homogenous.

• Language: English

The 38th

• Date: Saturday, April 15, 2023

• Time: 16:00 ~ 17:30

• Workshop format: in-person

• Workshop venue:  Room AN221, 2nd floor of Building A, Osaka-Ibaraki Campus (OIC) of Ritsumeikan University

• Access map: https://en.ritsumei.ac.jp/file.jsp?id=246773&f=.pdf

• Campus map: https://en.ritsumei.ac.jp/file.jsp?id=415116&f=.pdf

• Floor Map:   https://www.ritsumei.ac.jp/file.jsp?id=229844&f=.pdf

• Presenter: Dongyu Guo (NUCB Business School) 

• Presentation title: Input price discrimination: The role of pass-through 

• Abstract: We investigate input price discrimination under secret contracting between a manufacturer and competing retailers, whose activities exhibit retail effort spillovers. The effects of discriminatory pricing hinge upon the pass-through rate of input price to retail quantity. Such pass-through, defined according to the contractual structure (linear or two-part tariffs), varies with retail effort spillovers and product differentiation. Under each contractual structure, discriminatory pricing is welfare superior if and only if it magnifies the pass-through rate of production cost to input or retail price. Our results deliver novel insights into the role of pass-through in the antitrust assessment of input price discrimination.

•  Language: English

第37回

• Date:  4 March, 2023

• Venue:  Room 1405,  14th floor, Kwansei Gakuin Umeda Campus at Applause Tower: https://global.kwansei.ac.jp/about/access/campus_access

• Time table (tentative):  

  • 13:30 - 13:40: Opening remark by Hiroshi Osano

  • 13:40 - 14:25 (45 min): Presentation by Kimiyuki Morita (Senshu Univ): Delegation and Decision Process in Organizations (joint with Hideshi Itoh)

  • 20 min break

  • 14:45 - 15:30 (45 min): Presentation by Kazumi Hori (Ritsumeikan Univ): Sequential Screening with Cooperative Investment 

  • 20 min break

  • 15:50 - 16:35 (45 min): Presentation by Eric Chou (National Tsing Hua University): A theory of property rights for firm boundaries. 

  • 20 min break

  • 16:55: Closing remark by Hideshi Itoh

• Language: English

第36回

• Date: Saturday, February 18, 2023

• Time: 4:00PM~5:30PM

• Workshop format: hybrid (in-person and online).  Registration is needed for in-person participants prior to the workshop.  

• Workshop venue (in-person): Room 505-506 of B Building (Ritsumeikan Ibaraki future plaza) in Osaka Ibaraki campus (OIC) of Ritsumeikan University

• Access map: https://en.ritsumei.ac.jp/file.jsp?id=246773&f=.pdf

• Campus map: https://en.ritsumei.ac.jp/file.jsp?id=415116&f=.pdf

• Presenter: Akitoshi Muramoto (Osaka University of Economics)

• Presentation title: Asymmetric Optimal Auction Design with Loss-Averse Bidders (with Takeharu Sogo)

• Abstract: We study optimal auctions with expectation-based loss-averse bidders. We first consider when bidders are ex-ante identical. Although symmetric designs are optimal for bidders with expected-utility preferences, if the degree of loss aversion is sufficiently large relative to the variation in valuations, expected revenues are higher in the optimal design with one buyer than in any symmetric mechanism with multiple bidders. Further, we provide a sufficient condition under which optimal mechanisms are necessarily asymmetric. When bidders are ex-ante heterogeneous, the optimal degree of favoritism must be modified from the level in Myerson (1981) to reduce the uncertainty in auction outcomes. Not only the degree of the required modification but also the direction of the modification may not be monotone in the degree of loss aversion.

• Language: English

第35回

• Date: Saturday, January 28, 2023

• Time: 4:00PM~5:30PM

• Workshop format: hybrid (in-person and online).  Registration is needed for in-person participants prior to the workshop.  

• Workshop venue (in-person): Room 505-506 of B Building (Ritsumeikan Ibaraki future plaza) in Osaka Ibaraki campus (OIC) of Ritsumeikan University

• Access map: https://en.ritsumei.ac.jp/file.jsp?id=246773&f=.pdf

• Campus map: https://en.ritsumei.ac.jp/file.jsp?id=415116&f=.pdf

• Presenter: Makoto Watanabe (KIER of Kyoto University) 

• Presentation title: Directed Search on a Platform: Meet Fewer to Match More? 

• Abstract: This paper explores the relationship between market transparency and efficiency in a directed search market intermediated by a profit-maximizing platform. We first provide necessary and sufficient conditions under which efficiency requires imperfect transparency such that each seller is not observed by all buyers. Full transparency is not optimal for either buyers or sellers. In particular, buyers prefer the minimum level of transparency. We then show that the platform can implement the efficient outcome. Our key insight is robust to the introduction of a second chance for unmatched buyers to search.

• Language: English

第34回

• Date: Saturday, November 19, 2022

• Time: 4:00PM~5:30PM

• Workshop format: hybrid (in-person and online).  Registration is needed for in-person participants prior to the workshop.  

• Workshop venue (in-person): Room 515-516 of B Building (Ritsumeikan Ibaraki future plaza) in Osaka Ibaraki campus (OIC) of Ritsumeikan University

• Access map: https://en.ritsumei.ac.jp/file.jsp?id=246773&f=.pdf

• Campus map: https://en.ritsumei.ac.jp/file.jsp?id=415116&f=.pdf

• Presenter: Makoto Hanazono (Nagoya University）

• Presentation title: Pay for Performance in Procurement (with Juan-Jose Ganuza, Fernando Gomez)

• Abstract: This paper sheds light on the limitations of ``pay-for-performance'' in bidding markets with ex post moral hazard. High-powered incentive schemes may lead to worse allocations. We present our analysis in a procurement setting in which potential contractors differ both in their costs and levels of wealth and  are protected by limited liability. We show first that competitive mechanisms adversely select undercapitalized firms. Second, more powerful incentive mechanisms induce less desirable allocations: the selected contractor is likely to be at the same time less solvent and less efficient. As a result, low-powered incentives in procurement may be optimal.  This is consistent with the fact, that despite the large social welfare losses arising from inadequate performance by contractors (delays, cost overruns, deficient quality of output) in procurement, powerful pay-for-performance mechanisms appear to be rare in reality.

• Language: English

第33回

• 開催時間: 2022/10/22（土）午後4時~午後5時30分（ハイブリッド開催）

• 報告者: Yichuan Lou 氏（東京大学）

• 報告タイトル:  Optimal delegation with information manipulation

• Abstract: A principal delegates a decision to an agent, who has the capacity to process the relevant information. The principal cannot process information herself, but can jointly control the actions and the information available to the agent. I provide sufficient conditions under which the optimal mechanism (i) attains a perfect alignment of incentives— subject to the constraints on discretion and information, the agent plays exactly as the principal would want him to; and (ii) belongs to a simple class of delegation and disclosure rules, called monotone partitional rules, which specify a finite set of allowable actions from which the agent chooses his preferred one, and moreover, partition the state space into finite intervals so that the agent only learns to which interval the true state belongs. I then turn to the uniform-quadratic case which permits an explicit characterization of optimal mechanisms and clear comparative statics. Finally, I discuss two applications: the regulation of a monopolist, and the self-control of a dynamically inconsistent individual.

• 報告言語: English

第32回

• 開始時刻: 2022/07/16（土）午後4時（ハイブリッド開催）

• 報告者: Juan-José Ganuza氏 (Universitat Pompeu Fabra, and Barcelona Graduate School of Economics)

• 報告タイトル: Biased Financial Advisers, Regulation, and Transparency (joint with Fernando Gomez and Jose Penalva)

• Abstract: We study the effects of transparency and investor sophistication over the incentives of a financial adviser to provide honest and suitable financial advice to partially informed consumers. The novel aspect of our analysis is the inclusion of courts as a costly mechanism to provide incentives to reduce incorrect advice, where the cost arises from judicial errors due to imperfect evidence. We show that the cost of using courts to provide appropriate incentives is decreasing in investor sophistication and transparency. However, the judicial system may not be able to implement the first best without appropriate regulation when advisers can choose their level of transparency. In such a case, advisers with strong incentives to provide incorrect advice may be tempted to reduce transparency if it increases the prevalence of judicial error. The analysis sheds lights on the structure of legal duties of investment services firms, such as those under the recent European MiFID II scheme.

• 報告言語: 英語

第31回

• 開始時刻: 2022/06/18   午後4時（オンライン開催）

• 報告者: 安藤 至大氏（日本大学）

• 報告タイトル: A conditional match rate anomaly and an order change pressure in residency matching programs (北原稔氏との共著)

• Abstract: In the medical residency matching markets in the U.S. and Japan, we observe that an applicant's probability of being matched to the first listed program is　disproportionately higher than that to the second listed conditional on that the applicant is rejected by the first, while the conditional probabilities are relatively stable after that. In addition, several experts have pointed out that participating programs sometimes exert pressure on applicants to influence the creation of their lists. In this paper, we first show that the latter can explain the former, considering a specialty of first listing.  Then, we use the data to find both substantial pressure and welfare loss, assuming a simple reduced-form acceptance and forcing process. In addition, we consider a probabilistic permutation of the submitted list to prevent pressure-induced list reordering and find in the data that the benefits of the intervention outweigh the associated efficiency losses.

• 報告言語：日本語

第30回

• 開始時刻 : 2022/05/21   午後4時（ハイブリッド開催）

• 対面会場: 立命館大学大阪いばらきキャンパス

• 報告者: 森 祐介 氏（立命館大学 ）

• 報告タイトル: Contractible Specific Investment, Loss Aversion, and Firm Boundaries 

• Abstract: This study provides a behavioral model of firm boundaries by extending the property right theory of the firm to the case of loss-averse trading parties who can undertake non-contractible general investments as well as contractible specific investments. The choice of governance structure determines the probability of each party’s becoming the first proposer in non-cooperative renegotiation, and then, affects their reference point regarding the renegotiation outcome. We show that integration induces the highest aggregate specific investment. We also show that, for joint ownership/non-integration to be optimal, the degree of loss aversion needs to be sufficiently low.

• 報告言語: 日本語

第29回

• 開始時刻 : 2022/04/16   午後4時

• 報告者: 森谷文利 氏（神戸市外国語大学 ）

• 報告タイトル:  An optimal Structure of Help (joint with Takuro Yamashita)

• Abstract: To deal with unforeseen negative shocks, organizations sometimes require their member to help each other. This research compares two types of help structure: (1) "circle" (all members help) and (2) "hierarchy" (one member mainly helps ), and consider what structure of help is optimal. Our conclusion is that (i) when help is verifiable and a cost to help the other member is convex, circle is optimal, (ii) in the case that help is not verifiable, hierarchy can be optimal even if the cost function is convex.

• Language: Japanese

第28回

• 開始時刻 : 2022/03/19   午後4時

• 報告者: 橋立洋祐 氏（早稲田大学）

• 報告タイトル: Social Preferences through Preference over Menus: Experimental Evidence (Joint work with Tetsuya Kawamura, Fabrice Le Lec, Yusuke Osaki, and Benoît Tarroux)

• Abstract: This paper aims to elicit social preferences through the choice between menus of social allocations. We consider a two-stage problem, a modified version of dictator games. In the first stage, the dictator (hereafter, DM) chooses between menus of allocations from which she will have to select one in the second stage. The first-stage choice is private, i.e., unobservable by the recipient, while the second-stage choice can be public, depending on the treatment. In treatment T1, the recipient observes the choice made by the DM and all the available allocations in the menu; in treatment T2, the only information given to the recipient is her payoff, but she has no information about the available allocations and the final payoff of the DM. We conduct online experiments in France and Japan. We find that selfish participants tend to remove the socially preferred allocation from their menu. We also find that generous subjects have various patterns. We observe a significant preference for removing the selfish allocation from their menu and being free to be selfish. We report some cases of the difference between treatments and between France and Japan. 

第27回 (関東学院大学経済経営研究所研究会との共催）

• 開始時刻 : 2022/02/19   午後9時

• 報告者: 天野友道氏（ハーバード大学）

• 報告タイトル: Gaming or Gambling?  An Empirical Investigation of the Role of Loot Boxes Addiction in Video Games 

• Abstract: In 2020, gamers worldwide spent more than $15 billion on loot boxes, a lottery of virtual items that can be purchased in video games. We examine why consumers purchase these loot boxes in often free-to-play games. We separate out two economic drivers of tastes for these in-game purchases: a functional value of receiving virtual items that complement game play, and a direct utility of opening loot boxes. The two drivers mirror the contrasting views between those in the gaming industry who argue that these purchases supplement game play, and regulators who argue that they can prompt gambling-like behavior, respectively. In a popular Japanese mobile game, our empirical context, we find evidence of the presence of two drivers as predicted by our model. We develop and estimate an empirical dynamic discrete choice model that separates out these drivers of demand, accounting for future game play benefits that loot boxes provide to players. We find that, in our context, loot box openings are driven primary because of their direct utility. We discuss how our model can be used to illustrate the consequences that marketing decisions and regulatory policies can have, not only on loot box openings, but on how players interact with the game overall.

第26回

• 開始時刻 : 2022年1月29日　午後9時（時間に注意！）

• 報告者: 方元駒 氏（大阪大学）

• 報告タイトル: Matching with Subjective and Objective Evaluations: Chinese College Admission Reconsidered（安田洋祐氏との共著）

• Abstract: Each year, millions of high school graduates in China take a standardized test and compete for college seats. Unlike other countries, college admissions in China have a distinct feature that the assignment is determined by three factors: test scores, students' preferences, and colleges' preferences. In practice, since there is a huge number of students in the market, colleges do not have time to review each student’s application material and consequently they may fail to figure out their preferences over the entire students. To alleviate this problem, the government has implemented a so-called “dummy quota policy”. The Chinese parallel (CP) mechanism, based on this policy, is a variant of the serial dictatorship (SD) mechanism but has various drawbacks. In this paper, we consider two scenarios depending on whether the dummy quota policy is maintained or abandoned. For each scenario, we propose a modified parallel mechanism to improve the allocation outcome of the CP mechanism.

第25回

• 開始時刻 : 2021/11/20（土）午後4時（時間に注意！）

• 報告者: 神田 豊氏（大阪大学）

• 報告タイトル: Performance report, task allocation, and wage contract （高原 豪氏との共著）

• Abstract: This paper analyzes the effect of performance report disclosure on the optimal incentivized wage. Our analysis assumes that disclosing the performance report forms a reputation among third parties regarding the agent's ability. Furthermore, we assume that the principal designs the wage scheme that designates the high-ability agents to an uncertain but advanced task and the low-ability to a certain but conventional task. We have compared the following two patterns of the disclosure; i) which task was performed, and the success or failure of the result if the advanced task was executed (detailed disclosure), ii) only if the advanced task was performed and succeeded (limited disclosure). Our analysis shows that the detailed disclosure leads to a higher expected wage, and the limited disclosure leads to a lower expected wage. This result is obtained as the detailed disclosure conveys the agent type more precisely than the limited disclosure. Therefore, the principal must pay an additional wage for the conventional task that the low-ability agent executes. Moreover, we have shown that the detailed disclosure reduces the agent's incentive for investment to be high-ability before the contract is offered.

第24回

• 開始時刻 : 2021/10/30（土）午後4時（時間に注意！）

• 報告者: 野津 隆臣氏 （京都大学）

• 報告タイトル: Repeated games with repayment constraints

• Abstract: In this paper, we consider a repeated Bertrand competition in which firms face constraints such that firms must repay their borrowing. There exists a deadline period for the repayment and if a firm fails to clear off the debt, then the firm goes into bankruptcy and exits from the market. Taking lenders' interests into account, we investigate whether or not there exists an equilibrium in which all firms repay their borrowing and collude afterwards. We first find that if firms are sufficiently patient relative to a deadline, collusion with all firms' full repayment cannot be sustained by an equilibrium with symmetric repayment behavior. On the other hand, collusion with all firms' full repayment can be sustained by an equilibrium with asymmetric repayment behavior if there exists a firm whose monopoly price is less than marginal costs of all the other firms. Next, we assume that there does not exist such an efficient firm and we construct a collusive equilibrium under a condition such that a deadline is sufficiently large relative to firms' patience. We also characterize the deadline period for the equilibrium.

第23回 CTW(Z) 夏の拡大版

• 日時：2021/09/11（土）午後8時～（時間に注意！） 

第1報告者：午後8時～8時45分，村本顕理（大阪経済大学）

• 論題: Signal Blurring in Relational Contracts （石原章史氏との共著)

• 要旨:This paper considers a relational contracting model where the principal ex-ante commits to a  disclosure policy that determines whether participants can or cannot observe the signal about the future outside options. Our main results are as follows. First, any equilibrium payoffs for the participants can be supported by a self-enforcing stationary contract regardless of whether the participants update the future outside options. Second, the optimal disclosure policy changes depending on the players' patience. Especially, the non-disclosure policy is weakly optimal for patient players, while the disclosure policy is for impatient players.  As an application, we also consider the case of multi-agents and show that the aggregation of the individual effort signals may be optimal, although the aggregated signal is less informative for the effort levels than the original individual signals.

第2報告者：午後9時～10時，山縣昂平 氏（ワシントン大学・セントルイス校）

• 論題："The Transition between Internal Promotion and External Recruitment: from the Perspective of Perverse incentive of Internal Candidates" （多鹿 智哉氏との共著）

• 要旨：Internal promotion is often used to incentivize employees to work for their manager’s project’s success. However, suppose an employee believes that she will likely replace a manager in the future. In that case, she loses the motivation to contribute to the current project because she can emphasize her future managing ability by causing its failure (i.e., she makes the project look difficult.) We develop an OLG model in which a firm chooses internal or external, and within the firm, two workers compete for the next manager position. First, this paper shows that the first best is sometimes not supported by incentive compatibility.  It generates the transition between first-best and second-best internal promotion rules when the internal promotion is only available. We show that as long as the project’s difficulty is sufficiently uncertain, frequent shifts of the applied promotion rules occur. This uncertainty prevents the rapid updating about the level of difficulty and causes future uncertain beliefs of the perceived level of difficulty. Second, this paper shows that the first best is less likely incentive compatible when a person from outside occupies the job. Once external recruitment is applied (ex. myopic firm), it continues in the wider range of uncertainty (i.e., first best becomes less likely). Once external recruitment is applied(ex. myopic firm), the first best rule is less likely to be applied, and then external recruitment persists in the broader range of uncertainty, which results in low success rates in the long run. It suggests that the farsighted firm would apply for internal promotion even when the first best is inapplicable. Indeed, we find a case when external recruitment is forbidden, the long-run success rate improves by a numerical simulation. 

第22回

• 開始時刻: 2021/08/28（土）午後4時（時間に注意！） 

• 報告者: 白田 康洋氏（小樽商科大学）

• 報告タイトル: The Formation of Global Free Trade Agreement (Joint work with Akira Okada, 報告論文へのリンク）

• Abstract: We investigate the formation of Free Trade Agreement (FTA) in a competing importers framework with n countries. We show that (i) FTA formation causes a negative externality to non-participants, (ii) a non-participant is willing to join an FTA, and (iii) new participation may decrease the welfare of incumbent participants. A unique subgame perfect equilibrium of a sequential FTA formation game does not achieve global free trade under an open-access rule where a new applicant needs consent of members for accession, currently employed by many open regionalism agreements including APEC. We further show that global FTA is a unique subgame perfect equilibrium under an open-access rule without consent. 

第21回

• 開始時刻: 2021/07/17（土）午後4時（時間に注意！） 

• 報告者: 西村健氏(駒澤大学)

• 報告タイトル: An Experimental Study of Crémer–McLean Mechanisms 

• Abstract: The full-surplus-extraction auctions designed by Crémer and McLean (1988) are often criticized as unrealistic mechanisms. We assess the performance of these auctions in a controlled experimental environment. The experiment has two treatments: second-price and first-price auctions (SPA, FPA) with lotteries (or side bets). We focus on subjects’ bidding behavior by forcing them to participate in the auctions. Our experimental results show that overbidding persists in the SPA treatment, while it diminishes through rounds in the FPA treatment.

第20回

• 開始時刻: 2021/06/19（土）午後4時（時間に注意！）

• 報告者: 笠松怜史氏(武蔵大学)

• 報告タイトル:  Dynamic Dilemma of Political Distrust (Joint work with Daiki Kishishita)

• Abstract : Some anecdotes indicate a dynamic interaction between political distrust and money politics. To understand this, we first construct a static electoral competition model where two candidates propose policy platforms, and an interest group determines campaign spending for each candidate. We show that political distrust mitigates money politics; that is, in the presence of high political distrust, candidates do not choose a policy favored by the interest group. Based on this mechanism, we identify what we call dynamic dilemma of political distrust: political distrust improves the future democratic performance, whereas it is a signal of the past low performance. We then extend the model to a dynamic one where candidates are short-lived. We show that this dynamic dilemma creates endogenous cycles of political distrust and money politics when the conflicts of interests between voters and the interest group is large. Political distrust is accumulated, consumed, and then restored, following cycles of money politics.

第19回

• 開始時刻: 2021/05/22（土）午後9時（時間に注意！）

• 報告者: 岸下大樹氏(東京理科大学)

• 報告タイトル: Strategic Opposition and Electoral Accountability (joint with Satoshi Kasamatsu)

• 概要: This paper aims to explore whether the minority party’s monitoring mitigates a political agency problem between the majority party and voters. For this purpose, we construct a two-period election model where voters face information asymmetry regarding each party’s type. After the majority party’s policymaking, the minority party sends a cheap-talk message about whether to oppose the policymaking. We show that the monitoring by the minority party is not useful even under the possibility that the party is the ethical type who sincerely tells the truth. When the majority party is more popular than the minority party, the minority party’s opposition does not change voters’ voting behaviors, and thus it does not improve electoral accountability at all. When the majority party is less popular than the minority party, the minority party’s monitoring partially improves electoral accountability, but its effect is limited. Overall, a possibility of the ethical type does not guarantee that opposition improves electoral accountability.

第18回

• 開始時刻：2021/04/17（土）午後4時（時間に注意！）

• 報告者: 十河丈晴氏（SKEMA Business School）

• 報告タイトル：Feedback for Talent Development (joint with Osamu Hayashida and Kimiyuki Morita)

第17回

・開始時刻：2021/03/20（土）午後4時（時間に注意！）

・報告者： 佐藤進  氏（一橋大学）

・報告タイトル：Usage Lock-In and Platform Competition under Multihoming

第16回

・開始時刻：2021/02/20（土）午後9時（時間に注意！）

・報告者： 多鹿智哉 氏（北星学園大学）

・報告タイトル：Restriction and Restoration of Freedom: An EconomicApproach toward Psychological Reactance (with Kohei Daido)

第15回

・開始時刻：2021/01/30（土）午後9時（時間に注意！）

・報告者： 玉田康成 氏（慶應義塾大学）

・報告タイトル：Managing innovation through mediation  

第14回

（注）これまでのCTWZと開催時間が異なります。 

・開始時刻：2020/11/21（土）午後4時（時間に注意！）

・報告者： 栗野盛光 氏（慶應義塾大学）

・報告タイトル：How to avoid black markets for appointments with online booking systems (joint with Rustamdjan Hakimov, C-Philipp Heller, and Dorothea Kübler )

第13回

・開始時刻：2020/10/31（土）午後９時

・報告者： 藤原直輝氏（ロチェスター大学）

・報告タイトル：Price and Quality in Scoring Auction（粟屋祐氏・Szabó Márton Bence氏との共著 ）

第12回

・開始時刻：2020/10/17（土）午後９時

・報告者： 善如 悠介氏（神戸大学）

・報告タイトル：Platform Encroachment and Own-Content Bias 

CTWZ夏期研究集会（終了）

・１日目開始時刻：2020/09/01（火）午後8時

・２日目開始時刻：2020/09/02（水）午後8時30分

・プログラム(2020/08/18一部修正)

第11回（終了）

・開始時刻：2020/08/22（土）午後９時

・報告者： 石原章史氏（東京大学）

・報告タイトル：Exclusive Content with Captive Consumers in Platforms

第10回（終了）

・開始時刻: 2020/08/08（土）午後９時

・報告者： 川口康平氏（香港科技大学）

・報告タイトル：Small Business under the COVID-19 Crisis: Expected Short- and Medium-Run Effects of Anti-Contagion and Economic Policies

　（児玉 直美氏・田中 万理氏との共著）

第9回（終了）

・開始時刻：2020/07/18（土）午後９時

・報告者：岩﨑康平 氏（ウィスコンシン大学マディソン校）

・報告タイトル：Cryptocurrency Bubbles and Costly Mining

第8回（終了）

・開始時刻：2020/07/11（土）午後９時

・報告者： 石黒真吾氏（大阪大学）

・報告タイトル：Relational Contracts and Savings

第7回（終了）

・開始時刻：2020/07/04（土）午後９時

・報告者： 野田俊也氏（ブリティッシュコロンビア大学経済学部 ）

・報告タイトル：An Economic Analysis of Difficulty Adjustment Algorithms in Proof-of-Work Blockchain Systems （奥村恭平氏・橋本欣典氏との共著）

第6回（終了）

・開始時刻：2020/06/20（土）午後９時

・報告者： 難波敏彦氏（関西大学）

・報告タイトル：The Cost of Gaming in Quota Contracts

第5回（終了）

・開始時刻：2020/06/13（土）午後９時

・報告者： 市橋 翔太氏（カナダ銀行）

・報告タイトル：Markets for Perception (Rohit Lamba氏との共著) 

第４回（終了）

・開始時刻：2020/05/23（土）午後９時

・報告者： 川中大士郎氏（大阪大学大学院 ）

・報告タイトル：Pre-lattice fixed point theorem and matching with weak preferences​ 

第３回（終了）

・開始時刻：2020/05/09（土）午後９時

・報告者： 白井 洸志 氏（関西学院大学）

・報告タイトル：Nonparametric analysis of games with monotone best responses

第２回（終了）

・開催時刻：2020/04/25（土）午後９時

・報告者：福田 慧 氏（ボッコーニ大学）

・報告タイトル：The existence of universal qualitative belief spaces

第１回（終了）

・開催時刻：2020/04/18（土）午後９時

・報告者: 粟屋祐氏（ロチェスター大学）

・報告タイトル: Incentives under equal-pay constraint and subjective peer evaluation

   （Jihwan Do氏との共著）