Information Economics

When individuals make economics decisions, they often have different information than their peers or firms they interact with. This course is designed to analyze how an individual’s private information (or lack thereof) shapes their decision making and strategic interactions. This course introduces students to formal models of asymmetric information which we use to analyze moral hazard, adverse selection, mechanism design, matching, cheap talk, and costly information acquisition. Throughout the course we will study applications of the models we cover including car sales, job search, certification programs, bargaining, auctions, school choice, course selection, and selling user data on tech platforms. (ECON 0255 required, ECON 0280 recommended) 3 hrs.sem.