Hi! My name is
Maria Betto.
I am an Economics PhD candidate at Northwestern University. My research interests are in Microeconomic Theory, including Choice and Decision Theory, Auctions, Information and Mechanism Design.
I am an Economics PhD candidate at Northwestern University. My research interests are in Microeconomic Theory, including Choice and Decision Theory, Auctions, Information and Mechanism Design.
Job market paper: Perceptiveness and Choice
Advising committee: Marciano Siniscalchi (co-chair), Alesssandro Pavan (co-chair) and Wojciezch Olzweski
Fields: Microeconomic Theory, Econometrics, Industrial Organization
Master thesis: Dynamic Markets for Lemons
Best student of the '14 graduating cohort (valedictorian)
Not all choices are obvious. When they are not, a decision-maker's perceptiveness determines how well she can resolve the complex trade-offs between alternatives and thus reach a decisive conclusion. This paper leverages the theory of fuzzy sets to introduce this notion to standard choice theory. In particular, fuzziness is used to provide a maximum level of perceptiveness, on a [0, 1] scale, with which one can say that an alternative is just as good as another -- i.e. an agent has to be more perceptive than that to realize that this is not true. I develop an axiomatic characterization of rationality for fuzzy binary relations, which I then show is equivalent to both a Fuzzy Weak Axiom (FWARP) and a representation by a family of nested, interval-valued utilities. While a fully perceptive individual is rational in the classical sense, lower perceptiveness generates coarser preference rankings where only the starkest of comparisons can be properly and accurately perceived. I illustrate the model with applications to Game Theory, and provide a novel explanation for the status quo bias where the size of the bias naturally increases with task complexity.
Working paper (soon)Slides (soon)TBA
Extendend abstract (soon)Working paper (soon)Slides (soon)When opposing parties compete for a prize, the sunk effort players exert during the conflict can affect the value of the winner's reward. These spillovers can have substantial influence on the equilibrium behavior of participants in applications such as lobbying, warfare, labor tournaments, marketing, and R&D races. To understand this influence, we study a general class of asymmetric, two-player all-pay contests where we allow for spillovers in each player's reward. The link between participants' efforts and rewards yields novel effects. In particular, players with higher costs and lower values than their opponent sometimes extract larger payoffs.
PaperSlides (soon)Detailed notes on the equilibrium construction of the symmetric all-pay auction.
Slides with basic concepts and examples for working through Edgeworth Box-type problems.