2022年10月26日光华管理学院行为科学和政策干预交叉创新团队第七次线下分享会顺利举行。本次分享会邀请到应用经济学系刘烁教授和韩禄康（Lukas Hensel）博士分享研究兴趣和研究进展。

刘烁教授

刘烁教授主要关注四个方向的研究：行为经济学和产业组织的结合、组织经济学、机制和信息设计与博弈论、调查实验的方法和应用。

刘烁教授着重介绍了行为产业组织理论（behavioral industrial organization）领域的研究。这一领域的传统范式是假设厂商利润最大化和理性的消费者可以做出最优选择。但大量研究表明，消费者远非教科书中的理性人，现实的消费者行为中存在各种偏误：注意力有限、时间偏好的不一致性、过度自信等。因此，行为产业组织经济学研究在考虑到消费者行为偏误的情况下，将产业组织经济学原有的传统假设改为厂商利润最大化和消费者的有限理性。因此，研究问题也转变成厂商如何通过合约设计和广告投放等策略“剥削”消费者。同时，研究也关注消费者偏误对厂商来说是否一定有利，产业规制政策能否起到理性模型所预期的作用等问题。

刘教授首先介绍了消费者偏好分布与厂商策略的研究。该研究的动机在于，由于产品信息的复杂性，消费者往往很难准确地做出最优决定。同时，信息提供的具体方式和产品复杂程度很大程度上由厂商策略性决定。当消费者受制于有限理性时，厂商会如何决策？常见的产业规制手段对提高消费者福利的效果如何？

假设市场上有两个厂商，该研究将消费者偏好分布分为两种情形：偏好分布趋于中性和偏好分布趋于极化。偏好中性意味着市场上摇摆不定的消费者较多，例如对于不喝啤酒的人来说不同啤酒之间的区别非常细微，因此没有明确的偏好。偏好极化意味着市场上意见强烈的消费者较多，例如消费者对外出时选择家庭型酒店还是商务型酒店的偏好通常比较明确。

当消费者偏好分布趋于中性时，厂商倾向于进行具有迷惑性的营销手段，即通过发送噪音（obfuscation）使产品信息更加复杂。这是由于在一定概率下，原本摇摆不定的消费者在接收到厂商发出的噪音后更加偏好这一厂商。制造噪音之后消费者偏好极化的效果更显著，从而增强厂商的定价能力，软化市场价格竞争。如果分布趋于极化，增加噪音可能使原来有明确偏好的消费者变得摇摆不定，从而降低厂商定价能力。因此在偏好分布趋于极化时，厂商应更倾向于使用具有教育性的营销手段，以增强定价能力，软化价格竞争。

这一研究的政策启示包括，若采用强制信息披露，在偏好中性的情况下，消费者将明显获益；而在偏好极化的情况下，采取强制信息披露虽然减少了错配，但反而会提高市场价格。若采取政府指定提供基本类型产品，偏好中性的情况下，消费者的福利可能受损，而在偏好极化的情况下，政策可能没有效果。

刘烁教授随后介绍了定向广告与有限注意力研究。研究动机在于，大数据时代，精准定向广告的出现并没有终结垃圾信息。该研究重点关注放松消费者有无限注意力这一隐含假设对研究定向广告投放效果的影响。如果消费者的注意力是有限的，当同时接收到多份信息时，消费者往往只能注意到少部分信息，且不一定会注意到最有价值的信息，定向广告的有效性取决于广告发送的单位成本。当广告发送成本较高时，厂商与消费者间可能出现完全错配。当广告发送成本较低时，厂商则会陷入囚徒困境，再次陷入无限投放，同时导致对厂商的负向激励循环，厂商也没有动机提供更有精度的广告。

刘烁教授近期关注的行为科学研究包括：信息更新中的相关性忽视（correlation-neglecting）、简单抽样决策（sampling without prior）和形象顾虑（image concerns）。

刘烁教授与其他到场教授就厂商在极化偏好下如何软化价格竞争、强制信息披露政策的效果和厂商广告精准投放能力等议题展开了交流讨论。

韩禄康博士

Dr. Hensel introduced his two arms of research agenda related to behavioral economics. One is the motives of political activists, and the other being the information and labor markets in developing countries. For political activity studies, he is particularly interested in strategic interactions, the hybrid between traditional economics and other motives in the behavioral literature, and the effect of voice on political activism.

For information and labor market research in developing countries, in addition to the traditional development story, he focuses on the impacts of incomplete information on labor market frictions, belief formation, and signal interpretation. He also studies the success of workers and workplace and hiring outcomes relating to socioemotional skills. In addition, he explores the implication of expectations on worker turnover, specifically about how expectations about job satisfaction compare to job seekers’ realized job satisfaction, to ultimately make statements about the rationality of these expectations. The unifying themes in Dr. Hensel’s research are field experiments, limited information, and belief formation.

He first talked about his research on political activists with respect to canvassing. The motivation of the research is that people’s beliefs about others’ canvassing intentions are often incorrect. Hence, this research studies the effect of providing true information on the strategic interactions between party members’ canvassing efforts. Dr Hensel’s research shows that when given information on the competing party’s increased campaigning effort, the treatment group reduces canvassing participation towards the election.They observe that the increased competition lowered party supporters’ political self-efficacy, leading to subdued participation.

Using an experiment with the sample population, they found that when given information on own party’s increased campaigning effort, the treatment group also reduces canvassing effort towards the election. They discovered huge heterogeneity among the treated, such that members with weak ties to the party are more likely to free ride on other member’s campaigning effort.

In another study, Dr. Hensel explored the different strategic interactions across movements. His research found that when treated with own party’s campaigning effort, left-wing individuals exhibit strategic complementarity, whereas right-wing individuals exhibit strategic substitutability. However, this research has yet to reach a conclusion about the underlying mechanisms of this striking difference. It could be driven by differences at the individual level, movement level, or society level.

As a result, Dr. Hensel’s next step on political movement research is to provide evidence on the motives. Open text response shows that more than 40% indicates no change in efforts, while more than 30% claims to adjust efforts according to strategic substitutability. Conditioning on strategic substitutability, a structured response shows that 80% were due to free-riding. Conditioning on strategic complementarity, the result was less uniform, with concerns such as social image, reciprocity, increasing returns, enjoyment, and other motivations. Dr. Hensel suggested that mechanism experiments might be difficult to separate the individual effects, which calls for theoretical models with heterogeneous agents and motives.

For labor market in developing countries, Dr. Hensel emphasizes the importance of information provision. Dr. Hensel outlined the research project where he and coauthors helped workers in South Africa to learn about their comparative advantage in skills. They offered assessments on six skills and provided extensive information afterwards about their performance and how to use it in job search. This experiment found that the treated group went on to seek more jobs matched with their comparative advantage in skills and had higher earnings after 3 months. The results also exhibit some heterogeneity among the sample. The result of the assessment for those already have correct information about themselves was minimal. In other words, the treatment was only effective for those with wrong prior information.

Dr. Hensel discussed with other professors regarding how to reach an overarching theory to reconcile the differences in political activism and the possibility of using priming to identify underlying mechanisms.

分享人

刘烁，现任bat365在线平台网站光华管理学院应用经济学系助理教授。刘烁教授的研究关注行为经济学理论在企业竞争、市场监管和组织内部激励设计等问题中的应用。他的研究可以被应用于分析消费者的非理性决策模式对厂商竞争策略（例如定价与广告投放）有效性的影响和企业内部绩效评估制度与管理人员社会性偏好的激励相容性等问题。这些研究为政府如何通过信息披露和标准制定等相对柔性的监管手段去保护有限理性消费者的福利、引导企业走出低效的“囚徒困境”式竞争等方面的议题提供思路和建议。

韩禄康（Lukas Hensel），现任bat365在线平台网站光华管理学院应用经济学系博士后。韩禄康博士关注行为经济在发展、劳动和政策上的应用。他的研究具体关注期望值对行为的影响，比如求职者的期望值对找工作的影响、个人对工资、 工作环境、晋升空间和外部机会的预期对辞职率的影响，以及选举活动出席人数预期对政治活动家参选的影响。韩禄康博士主要用现场和消息实验识别期望值对行为的因果影响。他也对心理健康与贫穷的关系很有兴趣。