Essays in mechanism and information design Mengjia Xia

Format:

Book

Thesis/Dissertation

Author/Creator:

Xia, Mengjia, author.

Contributor:

University of Pennsylvania. Economics., degree granting institution.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Computer science.

0511.

0984.

0501.

Local Subjects:

Computer science.

0511.

0984.

0501.

Genre:

Academic theses

Physical Description:

1 online resource (89 pages)

Contained In:

Dissertations Abstracts International 87-12B

Place of Publication:

Ann Arbor : ProQuest Dissertations and Theses, 2026

Language Note:

English

Summary:

This dissertation studies the design of information and incentive mechanisms in environments characterized by asymmetric information, moral hazard, and costly verification. Across three chapters, it analyzes how institutions such as funding agencies, platforms, and evaluators optimally design rewards, ratings, and verification policies to improve resource allocation and efficiency. Chapter 1 analyzes optimal mechanisms in scientific research, where a funding agency designs rewards and verification while researchers choose project ambition, effort, and reporting. Under complete information, the principal can efficiently align incentives. However, under incomplete information, the optimal mechanism leads to a misallocation of talent, with highly skilled researchers steered toward modest projects rather than high-impact ones. Moreover, mitigating moral hazard requires costly verification, creating a trade-off between incentive provision and verification costs. Chapter 2 studies optimal rating design in an oligopoly market, where platforms provide ratings to inform consumers about firm quality, while firms also communicate information through prices. The optimal rating system depends on the platform's objective and consumers' sophistication. When consumers can infer quality from prices, the scope for ratings to improve welfare is limited. Chapter 3 examines the optimal design of verification mechanisms when verification is costly and imperfect. The optimal restricted mechanism exhibits a threshold structure: the principal verifies agents whose reported type exceeds a cutoff and accepts them if the verification signal exceeds a common threshold. This structure balances incentive provision and verification costs and remains robust to endogenous participation and heterogeneous verification costs

Notes:

Source: Dissertations Abstracts International, Volume: 87-12, Section: B.

Advisors: Vohra, Rakesh Committee members: He, Kevin; Lin, Xiao

Ph.D. University of Pennsylvania 2026

Vendor supplied data

Local Notes:

School code: 0175

ISBN:

9798247973386

Access Restriction:

Restricted for use by site license