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This dissertation focuses on exploring individual and strategic decision problems in Economics. I take a different approach in each chapter to capture various aspects of decision problems. An overview of this dissertation is provided in Chapter 1. Chapter 2 studies an individual's decision making in extensive-form games under ambiguity when the individual is ambiguous about an opponent's moves. In this chapter, a player follows Choquet Expected Utility preferences, since the standard Expected Utility cannot explain the situations of ambiguity. I raise the issue that dynamically inconsistent decision making can be derived in extensive-form games with ambiguity. To cope with this issue, this chapter provides sufficient conditions to recover dynamic consistency. Chapter 3 analyzes the strategic decision making in signaling games when a player makes an inference about hidden information from the behavioral hypothesis. The Hypothesis Testing Equilibrium (HTE) is proposed to provide an explanation for posterior beliefs from the player. The notion of HTE admits belief updates for all events including zero-probability events. In addition, this chapter introduces well-motivated modifications of HTE. Finally, Chapter 4 examines a boundedly rational individual who considers selective attributes when making a decision. It is assumed that the individual focuses on a subset of attributes that stand out from a choice set. The selective attributes model can accommodate violations of choice axioms of Independence from Irrelevant Alternative (IIA) and Regularity. / Doctor of Philosophy / This dissertation focuses on exploring individual and strategic decision problems in Economics. I take a different approach in each chapter to capture various aspects of decision problem. An overview of this dissertation is provided in Chapter 1. Chapter 2 studies an individual’s decision making in extensive-form games under ambiguity. Ambiguity describes the situation in which the information available to a decision maker is too imprecise to be summarized by a probability measure (Epstein, 1999). It is known that ambiguity causes dynamic inconsistency between ex-ante and interim decision making. This chapter provides sufficient conditions under which dynamic consistency is maintained. Chapter 3 analyzes the strategic decision making in signaling games in which there are two players: informed sender and uninformed receiver. The sender has a private information about his type and the receiver makes an inference about hidden information. This chapter suggests a notion of the Hypothesis Testing Equilibrium (HTE), which provides an alternative explanation for the receiver’s beliefs. The idea of the HTE can be used as a refinement of Perfect Bayesian Equilibrium (PBE) in signaling games to cope with the known limitations of PBE. Finally, Chapter 4 examines a boundedly rational individual who considers only salient attributes when making a decision. The individual considers an attribute only when it stands out enough in a choice set. The selective attribute model can accommodate violations of choice axioms of Independence from Irrelevant Alternative (IIA) and Regularity.

The first chapter presents a theoretical model of electoral competition where two parties can increase campaign contributions by choosing policies benefiting a significant interest group. However, such decision will shrink their hardcore vote base where voters are well informed about the policy. The parties can then allocate the funds between campaigning and personal wealth. Different from the core voters, independent voters can be attracted by advertisements funded by campaign spending. Using a multi-stage extensive form game, I investigate how electoral competition interacts with diversions and policy distortions. My result shows that a higher level of electoral competition helps mitigate policy distortions but prompts the parties to divert more funds. Perfectly informed signal senders need to communicate their true type (productivity or ability) which is often private information to potential receivers. While tests are commonly used as measures of applicants' productivity, the accuracy of them has been questioned. Beginning with the framework of a two-type labor market signaling game, the second chapter investigates how tests of limited reliability affect the nature of equilibria in signaling games with asymmetric information. Our results show that, if a test is inaccurate and costly, only pooling PBE exists given certain conditions. Different forms of test inaccuracy may allow a separating PBE to exist. We also study the case of three types and find different PBEs. The central issue of siting noxious facilities is that the host community absorbs potential costs, while all others can share the benefits without paying as much. The third chapter presents a modified Clarke mechanism to facilitate the siting decision, taking into account all residents' strategies. Suppose that the social planner is able to reasonably estimate the possible costs, depending on the host location, to each resident created by the facility. Our proposed Clarke mechanism is characterized by strategy-proofness and yields an efficient siting outcome. The issue of budget imbalance is mitigated when the compensation scheme is fully funded with the tax revenue based on the benefits. We then use a simple example to show that a weighted version of the Clarke mechanism may yield a different outcome. / Ph. D. / People worry that lobbying may affect legislative decision-making in ways that disadvantage ordinary citizens. The first chapter presents a theoretical model of electoral competition where two parties can increase campaign contributions by choosing policies benefiting a significant interest group. However, such decision will shrink their hardcore vote base where voters are well informed about the policy. The parties can then allocate the funds between campaigning and personal wealth. Different from the core voters, independent voters can be attracted by advertisements funded by campaign spending. The result shows that a higher level of electoral competition helps mitigate policy distortions, but prompts the parties to divert more funds. Signaling games have been widely used for decades. Perfectly informed signal senders need to communicate their true type (productivity or ability) which is often private information to potential receivers. While tests are commonly used as measures of applicants’ productivity, the accuracy of them has been questioned. Beginning with the framework of a two-type labor market signaling game, the second chapter investigates how tests of limited reliability affect the nature of equilibria in signaling games with asymmetric information. Our results show that, if a test is inaccurate and costly, both high- and low-productivity workers voluntarily take the test given certain conditions. Different forms of test inaccuracy may allow the existence of a specific equilibrium where only high-productivity workers are willing to take the test. We also study the case of three types and find different types of equilibria. The central issue of siting noxious facilities is that the host community absorbs potential costs, while all others can share the benefits without paying as much. The third chapter presents a modified Clarke mechanism to facilitate the siting decision, taking into account all residents’ strategies. Suppose that a social planner is able to reasonably estimate the possible costs, depending on the host location, to each resident created by the facility. Our proposed mechanism motivates all citizens to honestly report their preferences and yields an efficient siting outcome. The issue of budget imbalance is mitigated when the total cost, including the compensation scheme, is fully funded with tax revenues. We then use a simple example to show that a wealth-weighted version of our proposed Clarke mechanism may yield a different outcome.

This dissertation explores the issues of mixed oligopoly, restructuring, and M&A that occurs in turn on the stages of policy set-up, preparation, and performing when the government attempt to privatize the state-owned enterprises (SOEs). On the policy set-up stage, private firms in domestic market are not necessary confined to originate at home country. Foreign private firms may establish an oversea subsidiary and create a mixed oligopoly market structure at home country. In addition, those foreign private firms may not passively accept all the trade policies that came from the government decision of home country. Mixed oligopoly competition between one domestic public firm and one subsidiary of foreign private firm is been formulated to investigate the following questions: (1) how the agents compete under the cases that home country government adopts policies such as corporate tax rate, repatriation tax rate, and partial offering public stocks; and the foreign private firm implements strategies such as vertical integration and transfer pricing; (2) the impact on social welfare and the decision of optimal public stock-offering ratio while home country government¡¦s policies and foreign private firm¡¦s strategies have changed. New findings include (1) Home country government can not maximize social welfare by simply adopting strategic policies; (2) For home country government, the best strategy for privatizing SOEs maybe partial privatization; (3) For home country government, ¡§mass privatization¡¨ should be avoided as the means of manipulating domestic market shares. On the preparation stage, an incentive scheme model is designed to analyze the governance mechanism for improving SOEs¡¦ situation. First, different types of SOEs are classified according to their own ability and the employees¡¦ attitude for privatization. By offering a sound device of incentive scheme, the government is able to strengthen the SOEs¡¦ ability and employees¡¦ desirability. Within a one-stage symmetric information game framwork, it proves that SOEs with high ability and their employees with high privatization desirability can implement the highest amount of public stock offering ratio. Next, it utilizes a two-stage asymmetric game model for discussing how to improve the SOEs¡¦ ability and how to encourage the employees to support privatization. By providing an incentive contract, the government not only can coerce the SOEs but also can inspire their employees to reveal their true information. The due process of public stock offering is able to strengthen the abilities of SOEs via ¡§restructuring¡¨ on the one hand, and to facilitate the issue of ¡§training subsidies¡¨ for hatching the entrepreneurship of employees on the other hand. Finally, it investigates the impact on public stock offering ratio for the amount of specific grants, and found that the more generosity of incentive contract, the higher the public stock offering ratio. On the performing stage, it adopts the incentive theorem to analyze the outcome of SOEs¡¦ privatization by inviting a named firm. The named firm takes over the SOEs through M&A for the purpose of long-term operation. In order to encourage the employees of the privatized company working more aggressively, the named firm comes up incentive schemes including bonus-sharing and Employees Stock Ownership Plan, ESOP. It found that whether there exists information asymmetry or not between the named firm and the employees of the privatized company will affect the following decision-makings: the level of the employees¡¦ effort, the willingness of the employees¡¦ stock-holding, and the achievement of the named firm¡¦s profit maximizing objective. In particular, it shows that the change of the contents of the incentive schemes will affect the bargaining outcomes between the named firm and the trade union of the SOEs on the issue of working conditions after privatization.