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Frontiers in Mechanism Design: Methodology and Applications

Objective

Mechanism design is the engineering side of economics. Research findings in this field have helped governments and practitioners worldwide design better institutions: auctions that are more profitable or efficient; labour markets that improve the match between employees and employers; and better ways to assign students to public schools. The cornerstone of mechanism design is the revelation principle, which provides a canonical class of mechanisms and turns the mechanism-selection problem (which a priori may appear unmanageable) to a constrained optimization problem. The standard mechanism design paradigm relies on three fundamental assumptions: 1. The designer of the institution—the principal—does not have any privileged information. 2. The principal chooses the mechanism and commits to it once and for all. 3. There is no interrelationship of the mechanism with outside markets. In addition, almost the entire mechanism design literature assumes that private information is unverifiable (soft). These assumptions often fail in today’s “big data” world: Firms (online retailers, insurance companies, banks) do have privileged—and often certifiable—information that may affect contractual terms they propose. Also, they interact repeatedly with the same agents and, as they learn about them, they attempt to change the terms by making personalized offers. Finally, often a mechanism—e.g. a government insurance program—interacts with private insurance markets. The proposed research aims at providing methods and foundations to design optimal mechanisms at precisely those highly relevant situations: 1. mechanism-design by an informed principal, 2. design of mechanisms and their transparency when the principal lacks commitment, 3. mechanism-design when an intervention interacts with markets. The latter part of the project aims to employ these cutting-edge tools to revisit the design of insurance markets.

Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)

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Keywords

Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)

Programme(s)

Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.

Topic(s)

Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.

Funding Scheme

Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.

ERC-COG - Consolidator Grant

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Call for proposal

Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.

(opens in new window) ERC-2015-CoG

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Host institution

UNIVERSITY COLLEGE LONDON
Net EU contribution

Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.

€ 1 644 774,00
Address
GOWER STREET
WC1E 6BT LONDON
United Kingdom

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Region
London Inner London — West Camden and City of London
Activity type
Higher or Secondary Education Establishments
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Total cost

The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.

€ 1 644 774,00

Beneficiaries (1)

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