Date and Time

Wednesday, July 9th, 2025
17:00 p.m.-18:30 p.m.

Presenter

Dr. Bruno Strulovici (Northwestern University)

Title

Ethical Mechanism Design

Abstract

A planner has access to agents with varying levels of ethical preferences: some “non-ethical” agents respond only to material incentives while others may, with some probability, have an intrinsic preference for taking socially valuable actions. How can the planner best utilize these possibly-ethical agents to achieve desirable outcomes?
This talk will describe two instances of this question. In the first one, the planner needs an agent to perform a task and can use possibly-ethical agents to perform the task or to incentivize non-ethical agents to perform it. In the static version of this problem, the optimal hiring strategy turns out to be non-monotonic in the likelihood of ethical types. In a repeated version of the model, new incentive constraints emerge that reflect agents’ reputations and dynamic information about each other’s types.
The second model considers a planner in charge of hiring agents in the public sector when such agents have outside options in the private sector. Agents have unobservable ethical preferences that are valuable in the public sector and unobservable skills that affect their values in both the private and the public sectors. The planner must therefore solve a multi-dimensional screening problem. I will discuss how optimal hiring strategies and wages depend on agents’ outside options in the private sector and other parameters of the problem.

About

We will have a research seminar with Professor Bruno Strulovici ( https://faculty.wcas.northwestern.edu/bhs675/ ) from Northwestern University on Wednesday, July 9. Professpr Strulovici is an economic theorist whose research interests include dynamic and collective decision making, comparative statics, time inconsistency, law and economics, and contract theory. He was the recipient of a Sloan Foundation Research Fellowship and a National Science Foundation Early Career Development award, and is a Foreign Editor of the Review of Economic Studies and Associate Editor of the Journal of Economic Theory.

Venue

Mid Conference Room (Graduate School of Economics), Rokko-dai 1st Campus, Building Ⅲ 1F

Language

English

Co-organized by

Rokkodai Theory Seminar, Rokko Forum

Intended Participants

Professors, Graduate students including KIMAP students and Alumni of Kobe University.

How to register for this seminar

Please register at the URL below.

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1iDpq4GuqNCd_q3bovXvbIiDVpGbC7c8NbcK312hmbk0

Remarks

Please apply by Saturday, July 5th if you would like to interact with Dr. Bruno Strulovici before or after the seminar.