arXiv subjects

Shota Ichihashi

Publications and source records attributed to Shota Ichihashi.

4 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Mechanism Design for Ad-Supported Platforms

Many digital platforms earn revenue by selling content access and displaying ads. We study monopoly screening by a platform allocating heterogeneous content and ads to heterogeneous consumers. Advertising generates revenue and affects information rents through nuisance, which alters the platform's incentives to allocate content. The optimal mechanism balances a trade-off between advertising and rent extraction: Expanding content access increases advertising revenue but reduces sales revenue by raising information rents. The mechanism features novel distortions in content access and ad exposure, rationalizes contracts across ad-supported platforms, and explains why greater ad profitability may weaken incentives to invest in content quality.

econ.TH↗

arXiv2026

Monitoring Hierarchies in Knowledge Production

We study peer monitoring design in knowledge production. A principal leads agents who work on different but related tasks. By working on their own tasks, agents acquire information that is useful for evaluating their peers' performance. We consider robust contracts under which effort by all agents is the unique rationalizable outcome. The optimal contract induces a hierarchy of monitoring authority: agents easier for the principal to monitor directly are assigned greater authority to evaluate other agents. Task diversity improves information value but weakens peer monitoring. This tension distorts optimal public task assignment toward the principal's core expertise. Confidential random assignment relaxes this distortion by decoupling information production from the perceived monitoring structure.

econ.TH↗

arXiv2026

Algorithmic Recommendations and Strategic Pricing

We study algorithmic recommendations in a market with a buyer, privately informed sellers, and an algorithm that can recommend a product based on product values and posted prices but cannot use transfers or force purchases. For objectives ranging from total surplus to buyer surplus, algorithmic recommendations implement the same welfare outcomes as direct mechanisms. We study the effects of algorithmic recommendations on pricing, competition, the composition of trade, and market segmentation. Our results inform the operation of AI assistants and other technologies that mediate product discovery, attention, and pricing.

econ.TH↗

arXiv2023

Data Provision to an Informed Seller

A monopoly seller is privately and imperfectly informed about the buyer's value of the product. The seller uses information to price discriminate the buyer. A designer offers a mechanism that provides the seller with additional information based on the seller's report about her type. We establish the impossibility of screening for welfare purposes, i.e., the designer can attain any implementable combination of buyer surplus and seller profit by providing the same signal to all seller types. We use this result to characterize the set of implementable welfare outcomes, study the seller's incentive to acquire third-party data, and demonstrate the trade-off between buyer surplus and efficiency.

econ.TH↗