Postgraduate - UnitECC5840 - Information, incentives and games

This unit entry is for students who completed this unit in 2015 only. For students planning to study the unit, please refer to the unit indexes in the the current edition of the Handbook. If you have any queries contact the managing faculty for your course or area of study.

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6 points, SCA Band 3, 0.125 EFTSL

Refer to the specific census and withdrawal dates for the semester(s) in which this unit is offered.

Level	Postgraduate
Faculty	Faculty of Business and Economics
Organisational Unit	Department of Economics
Offered	Not offered in 2015
Coordinator(s)	Professor Nick Feltovich

Synopsis

This unit provides students with training in information economics and applied game theory. Discussion of key concepts in game theory; the nature of different kinds of information asymmetries (whether the informed party has private knowledge about certain events, whether he/she can undertake actions unobservable to others); and economic implications. Explore how different incentive mechanisms (signalling by the informed party and screening by the uninformed party) can be used to mitigate the impact of asymmetric information.

Outcomes

The learning goals associated with this unit are to:

understand the key concepts in game theory, as well as the nature and economic implications of different kinds of information asymmetries
understand how different incentive mechanisms -- for example, signalling by the informed party and screening by the uninformed party may be useful in mitigating the impact of asymmetric information on economic activities
critically evaluate the extent to which a particular application of information economics and game theory succeeds in generating new testable implications regarding the phenomena under study
construct formal models to study the importance of informational problems in explaining phenomena that are of interest to them.

Assessment

Within semester assessment: 50%
Examination: 50%

Workload requirements

Minimum total expected workload to achieve the learning outcomes for this unit is 144 hours per semester typically comprising a mixture of scheduled learning activities and independent study. Independent study may include associated readings, assessment and preparation for scheduled activities. The unit requires on average three/four hours of scheduled activities per week. Scheduled activities may include a combination of teacher directed learning, peer directed learning and online engagement.

Chief examiner(s)

Professor Nick Feltovich

Prerequisites

ECC5650