arXiv subjects

Federico Echenique

Publications and source records attributed to Federico Echenique.

At least 37 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

arXiv2024

Empirical Welfare Economics

Welfare economics relies on access to agents' utility functions: we revisit classical questions in welfare economics, assuming access to data on agents' past choices instead of their utilities. Our main result considers the existence of utilities that render a given allocation Pareto optimal. We show that a candidate allocation is efficient for some utilities consistent with the choice data if and only if it is efficient for an incomplete relation derived from the revealed preference relations and convexity. Similar ideas are used to make counterfactual choices for a single consumer, policy comparisons by the Kaldor criterion, and offer bounds on the degree of inefficiency in a Pareto suboptimal allocation.

econ.TH↗

arXiv2024

Binary Mechanisms under Privacy-Preserving Noise

We study mechanism design for public-good provision under a noisy privacy-preserving transformation of individual agents' reported preferences. The setting is a standard binary model with transfers and quasi-linear utility. Agents report their preferences for the public good, which are randomly ``flipped,'' so that any individual report may be explained away as the outcome of noise. We study the tradeoffs between preserving the public decisions made in the presence of noise (noise sensitivity), pursuing efficiency, and mitigating the effect of noise on revenue.

econ.TH↗

arXiv2024

Manipulation of Belief Aggregation Rules

This paper studies manipulation of belief aggregation rules in the setting where the society first collects individual's probabilistic opinions and then solves a public portfolio choice problem with common utility based on the aggregate belief. First, we show that belief reporting in Nash equilibrium under the linear opinion pool and log utility is identified as the profile of state-contingent wealth shares in parimutuel equilibrium with risk-neutral preference. Then we characterize belief aggregation rules which are Nash-implementable. We provide a necessary and essentially sufficient condition for implementability, which is independent of the common risk attitude.

econ.TH↗

arXiv2024

Screening $p$-Hackers: Dissemination Noise as Bait

We show that adding noise before publishing data effectively screens $p$-hacked findings: spurious explanations produced by fitting many statistical models (data mining). Noise creates "baits" that affect two types of researchers differently. Uninformed $p$-hackers, who are fully ignorant of the true mechanism and engage in data mining, often fall for baits. Informed researchers, who start with an ex-ante hypothesis, are minimally affected. We show that as the number of observations grows large, dissemination noise asymptotically achieves optimal screening. In a tractable special case where the informed researchers' theory can identify the true causal mechanism with very little data, we characterize the optimal level of dissemination noise and highlight the relevant trade-offs. Dissemination noise is a tool that statistical agencies currently use to protect privacy. We argue this existing practice can be repurposed to screen $p$-hackers and thus improve research credibility.

econ.TH↗

arXiv2024

Stable allocations in discrete exchange economies

We study stable allocations in an exchange economy with indivisible goods. The problem is well-known to be challenging, and rich enough to encode fundamentally unstable economies, such as the roommate problem. Our approach stems from generalizing the original study of an exchange economy with unit demand and unit endowments, the \emph{housing model}. Our first approach uses Scarf's theorem, and proposes sufficient conditions under which a ``convexify then round'' technique ensures that the core is nonempty. The upshot is that a core allocation exists in categorical economies with dichotomous preferences. Our second approach uses a generalization of the TTC: it works under general conditions, and finds a solution that is a version of the stable set.

econ.TH↗

arXiv2024

An Experimental Study of Decentralized Matching

We present an experimental study of decentralized two-sided matching markets with no transfers. Experimental participants are informed of everyone's preferences and can make arbitrary non-binding match offers that get finalized when a period of market inactivity has elapsed. Several insights emerge. First, stable outcomes are prevalent. Second, while centralized clearinghouses commonly aim at implementing extremal stable matchings, our decentralized markets most frequently culminate in the median stable matching. Third, preferences' cardinal representations impact the stable partners participants match with. Last, the dynamics underlying our results exhibit strategic sophistication, with agents successfully avoiding cycles of blocking pairs.

econ.GN↗

arXiv2023

Revealed preferences for dynamically inconsistent models

We study the testable implications of models of dynamically inconsistent choices when planned choices are unobservable, and thus only "on path" data is available. First, we discuss the approach in Blow, Browning and Crawford (2021), who characterize first-order rationalizability of the model of quasi-hyperbolic discounting. We show that the first-order approach does not guarantee rationalizability by means of the quasi-hyperbolic model. This motivates consideration of an abstract model of intertemporal choice, under which we provide a characterization of different behavioral models -- including the naive and sophisticated paradigms of dynamically inconsistent choice.

econ.TH↗

arXiv2023

Price & Choose

We describe a two-stage mechanism that fully implements the set of efficient outcomes in two-agent environments with quasi-linear utilities. The mechanism asks one agent to set prices for each outcome, and the other agent to make a choice, paying the corresponding price: Price \& Choose. We extend our implementation result in three main directions: an arbitrary number of players, non-quasi linear utilities, and robustness to max-min behavior. Finally, we discuss how to reduce the payoff inequality between players while still achieving efficiency.

econ.TH↗

arXiv2023

Recovering utility

We provide sufficient conditions under which a utility function may be recovered from a finite choice experiment. Identification, as is commonly understood in decision theory, is not enough. We provide a general recoverability result that is widely applicable to modern theories of choice under uncertainty. Key is to allow for a monetary environment, in which an objective notion of monotonicity is meaningful. In such environments, we show that subjective expected utility, as well as variational preferences, and other parametrizations of utilities over uncertain acts are recoverable. We also consider utility recovery in a statistical model with noise and random deviations from utility maximization.

econ.TH↗

arXiv2022

Efficiency in Random Resource Allocation and Social Choice

We study efficiency in general collective choice problems where agents have ordinal preferences and randomization is allowed. We explore the structure of preference profiles where ex-ante and ex-post efficiency coincide, offer a unifying perspective on the known results, and give several new characterizations. The results have implications for well-studied mechanisms including random serial dictatorship and a number of specific environments, including the dichotomous, single-peaked, and social choice domains.

econ.TH↗

arXiv2022

Decreasing Impatience

We characterize decreasing impatience, a common behavioral phenomenon in intertemporal choice. Discount factors that display decreasing impatience are characterized through a convexit y axiom for investments at fixed interest rates. Then we show that they are equivalent to a geometric average of generalized quasi-hype rbolic discount rates. Finally, they emerge through parimutuel preference aggregation of exponential discount factors.

econ.TH↗

arXiv2022

Closure operators: Complexity and applications to classification and decision-making

We study the complexity of closure operators, with applications to machine learning and decision theory. In machine learning, closure operators emerge naturally in data classification and clustering. In decision theory, they can model equivalence of choice menus, and therefore situations with a preference for flexibility. Our contribution is to formulate a notion of complexity of closure operators, which translate into the complexity of a classifier in ML, or of a utility function in decision theory.

econ.TH↗

arXiv2022

On the meaning of the Critical Cost Efficiency Index

This note provides a critical discussion of the \textit{Critical Cost-Efficiency Index} (CCEI) as used to assess deviations from utility-maximizing behavior. I argue that the CCEI is hard to interpret, and that it can disagree with other plausible measures of "irrational" behavior. The common interpretation of CCEI as wasted income is questionable. Moreover, I show that one agent may have more unstable preferences than another, but seem more rational according to the CCEI. This calls into question the (now common) use of CCEI as an ordinal and cardinal measure of degrees of rationality.

econ.TH↗

arXiv2022

Cite-seeing and Reviewing: A Study on Citation Bias in Peer Review

Citations play an important role in researchers' careers as a key factor in evaluation of scientific impact. Many anecdotes advice authors to exploit this fact and cite prospective reviewers to try obtaining a more positive evaluation for their submission. In this work, we investigate if such a citation bias actually exists: Does the citation of a reviewer's own work in a submission cause them to be positively biased towards the submission? In conjunction with the review process of two flagship conferences in machine learning and algorithmic economics, we execute an observational study to test for citation bias in peer review. In our analysis, we carefully account for various confounding factors such as paper quality and reviewer expertise, and apply different modeling techniques to alleviate concerns regarding the model mismatch. Overall, our analysis involves 1,314 papers and 1,717 reviewers and detects citation bias in both venues we consider. In terms of the effect size, by citing a reviewer's work, a submission has a non-trivial chance of getting a higher score from the reviewer: an expected increase in the score is approximately 0.23 on a 5-point Likert item. For reference, a one-point increase of a score by a single reviewer improves the position of a submission by 11% on average.

cs.DL↗

arXiv2022

Twofold Multiprior Preferences and Failures of Contingent Reasoning

We propose a model of incomplete \textit{twofold multiprior preferences}, in which an act $f$ is ranked above an act $g$ only when $f$ provides higher utility in a worst-case scenario than what $g$ provides in a best-case scenario. The model explains failures of contingent reasoning, captured through a weakening of the state-by-state monotonicity (or dominance) axiom. Our model gives rise to rich comparative statics results, as well as extension exercises, and connections to choice theory. We present an application to second-price auctions.

econ.TH↗

arXiv2021

Decision Making under Uncertainty: An Experimental Study in Market Settings

We implement nonparametric revealed-preference tests of subjective expected utility theory and its generalizations. We find that a majority of subjects' choices are consistent with the maximization of some utility function. They respond to price changes in the direction subjective expected utility theory predicts, but not to a degree that makes them consistent with the theory. Maxmin expected utility a dds no explanatory power. The degree of deviations from the theory is uncorrelated with demographic characteristics. Our findings are essentially the same in laboratory data with a student population and in a panel survey with a general sample of the U.S. population.

econ.GN↗

arXiv2021

Approximate Expected Utility Rationalization

We propose a new measure of deviations from expected utility theory. For any positive number~$e$, we give a characterization of the datasets with a rationalization that is within~$e$ (in beliefs, utility, or perceived prices) of expected utility theory. The number~$e$ can then be used as a measure of how far the data is to expected utility theory. We apply our methodology to data from three large-scale experiments. Many subjects in those experiments are consistent with utility maximization, but not with expected utility maximization. Our measure of distance to expected utility is correlated with subjects' demographic characteristics.

econ.GN↗

arXiv2021

Ordinal and cardinal solution concepts for two-sided matching

We characterize solutions for two-sided matching, both in the transferable and in the nontransferable-utility frameworks, using a cardinal formulation. Our approach makes the comparison of the matching models with and without transfers particularly transparent. We introduce the concept of a no-trade matching to study the role of transfers in matching. A no-trade matching is one in which the availability of transfers do not affect the outcome.

econ.GN↗