Social welfare in search games with asymmetric information

We consider games in which players search for a hidden prize, and they have asymmetric information about the prize's location. We study the social payoff in equilibria of these games. We present sufficient conditions for the existence of an equilibrium that yields the first-best payoff (i.e., t...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of economic theory 2022-06, Vol.202, p.105462, Article 105462
Main Authors: Bavly, Gilad, Heller, Yuval, Schreiber, Amnon
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Decentralized research
Incomplete information
Search duplication
Social welfare
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:We consider games in which players search for a hidden prize, and they have asymmetric information about the prize's location. We study the social payoff in equilibria of these games. We present sufficient conditions for the existence of an equilibrium that yields the first-best payoff (i.e., the highest social payoff under any strategy profile), and we characterize the first-best payoff. The results have interesting implications for innovation contests and R&D races.
ISSN:0022-0531
1095-7235
DOI:10.1016/j.jet.2022.105462