This is a recurring event: View all events in the series “Research Seminar in Economics”
The Research Seminar in Economics is a platform for invited speakers to present their current research, thereby facilitating the exchange between speakers and faculty members of the City University of London.
It covers empirical as well as theoretical contributions across all fields of economics. The Research Seminar in Economics is usually held weekly during the academic term.
This event is open to Department of Economics faculty and postgraduate students. Please contact [email protected] or [email protected] for any enquiries.
Speaker
Dr Seungwon (Eugene) Jeong (Lecturer in Economics, University of Bristol)
Abstract
During the COVID-19 pandemic, unreliable statistics are a growing concern. The government may want to underreport, and cure sellers may want to overreport the number of cases.
We introduce an Uncertainty Paradox: seemingly profitable misreporting can be unprofitable when misreporting leads to uncertainty. We relax both the correct belief and common belief assumptions, and first show that the seller should prefer no uncertainty in auctions.
However, the government - who runs the pandemic procurement that allocates stimulus-packages among companies affected by the pandemic - may prefer uncertainty. The incentive to misreport increases with the pandemic impact, and in the limit, uncertainty “disappears.”
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