Essays on Game Theory and Market Design

Abstract

The dissertation consists of three papers on microeconomic theory. Chapter 1 contains a paper that contributes to the literature on learning in games, in which my coauthors and I find a novel interaction between active learning and misspecification. Chapters 2 and 3 contain papers that contribute to the literature on intermediation in matching markets. Chapter 2 studies the intermediary’s information disclosure policies and establishes that the intermediary of a two-sided market has incentives to withhold information even when its motive is economic efficiency. A rich model for analyzing information disclosure problems is developed. Chapter 3 studies the intermediary’s incentives to reduce consumer search costs and finds that an intermediary who maximizes seller revenue will optimally maintain positive search costs. A simple price-theoretic model is developed to support our arguments.