Project description
Simplicity revisited to support the design of more practical market mechanisms
Simplicity plays a key role in market design. It lowers costs, reduces the impact of inequalities, encourages participation in markets and other institutions, and facilitates their evaluation. The EU-funded Simplicity project will address the following questions: What contracts and markets are simple? How can we compare the simplicity of contracts and markets? What are the trade-offs between simplicity and other objectives such as welfare, fairness, or revenue? The project’s further goals include developing a behaviourally grounded foundation for market design and practical ways to organise various markets and institutions, such as the assignment of scarce public resources and the sale of pollution permits and government securities.
Objective
Why are actual contracts and market mechanisms often simpler than our theoretical predictions? This is a central puzzle in microeconomics and, in many environments, it constrains our ability to rely on economic models. It raises further fundamental questions: What does it mean that a contract or a mechanism is simple? How to compare the simplicity of various contracts, mechanisms, and games? The proposed research program aims to address these questions and provide a new behaviorally- grounded foundation for market design, contract theory, and the analysis of simplicity. The program has three complementary parts: (i) to address the simplicity puzzle by developing a novel approach to contracting and mechanism design that takes into account perception errors; (ii) to operationalize what simplicity means and how various mechanisms, contracts, and games can be compared in terms of their simplicity; and (iii) to explore the trade-offs between simplicity and welfare-and-revenue criteria and to develop new practical market mechanisms for markets such as school choice, the assignment of medical transplants, and the auctions of commodities and government securities.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
This project's classification has been human-validated.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
This project's classification has been human-validated.
Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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H2020-EU.1.1. - EXCELLENT SCIENCE - European Research Council (ERC)
MAIN PROGRAMME
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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.
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.
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.
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
(opens in new window) ERC-2019-COG
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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.
8006 Zurich
Switzerland
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.