Skip to main content Skip to navigation

Microeconomic Theory

Microeconomic Theory

The Department of Economics at the University of Warwick has an active Microeconomic Theory Research Group, with a weekly external seminar, a weekly internal workshop, and high quality PhD students. We also organise international conferences on campus, or in Venice.

Our activities

CRETA Seminars in Economic Theory

Wednesday: 4-5.30pm
Since its creation in 2006, CRETA has run a seminar series with external and internal talks on economic theory and applications. For a detailed scheduled of speakers please follow the link below:

Organisers: Daniele Condorelli and Costas Cavounidis

Micro Theory Work in Progress (MIWP) Workshop

Thursday: 1-2pm
For faculty and PhD students at Warwick and other top-level academic institutions across the world. For a detailed scheduled of speakers please follow the link below.

Organiser: Agustin Troccoli-Moretti

People

Events

Show all calendar items

CRETA Theory Seminar - Sulagna Dasgupta (Bonn)

- Export as iCalendar
Location: S2.79

Title: Screening Knowledge

A principal (she) tests an agent's (he) knowledge of a subject matter. She has preferences over his unobserved quality, which is correlated with his knowledge. Modeling knowledge as beliefs over an unknown state, I show that optimal tests are simple: They take the form of True-False, weighted True-False or True-False-Unsure, regardless of the principal's preferences, the distribution of the agent's beliefs, its correlation with his quality or his knowledge thereof. The need to elicit knowledge forces the principal to trade-off the efficacy of the test in terms of whom it rewards, against how much it rewards them. The optimal resolution of this trade-off may lead to a partial penalty for an "obvious" answer even if it is correct, a partial reward for a "counterintuitive" answer even if it is incorrect, or a reward for admitting ignorance. When the principal can pick the subject matter, she picks one that admits no such obvious answers. In this case, the highly prevalent True-False test is always optimal, regardless of principal's preferences, agent's learning, or the specific optimal choice of the subject matter.

Show all calendar items

Let us know you agree to cookies