3
$\begingroup$

I was working on an Applied Math project on allocation and I had an interesting idea about extending it to providing incentives to different "players" in the allocation process.

But I am clueless about how incentives are designed. For instance, if I had 2 tickets to a football game and 5 people that I am trying to allocate to (2 get 1 each), how do I provide incentives for someone who doesn't really want to go to say no and stuff (basically, ensure that the "best" 2 actually get the tickets).

I just want to know where should I get started on reading about this. I understand this is probably under Game Theory and probably a subpart of Mechanism Design but is there a specialized field of Math/Econ for designing incentives?

  • 0
    @Jordan. Can't do that either. Picture this exact situation: I am in earthquake devastated regions (some are worse hit than others). Suppose I run a distribution center and there is a queue of people waiting for food. Assume that each person wishes to take away enough food to feed his entire family. How do I provide incentive to a person in the queue to tell me an un-exaggerated estimate of his/her family's needs? I don't want an answer to this question but rather a direction to start exploring. What subfield of math/econ would this come under?2012-12-11

1 Answers 1

2

I believe the area you are interested in is Information Economics.

There is a subpart of information economics, called Screening. Screening is essentially about how an uninformed agent can get an informed agent to provide truthful information about themselves.