Mini-Track Introduction: Strategy, Information, Technology, Economics, and Society (SITES)

The 2023 edition of the SITES Mini-Track contains four research contributions in a single session. An overarching theme across all papers is the observation that frictions in the exchange of information do exist, which should be taken into account, and that through endogenous effort they can sometimes be modulated. The analyses offered go well beyond the (by now) classical problems with asymmetric information that manifest themselves, for instance, in market failures when there is “adverse selection” (e.g., in a market for ‘lemons’), or in limited rents when there is hidden information, so the uninformed party may resort to designing a menu of options (“screening”) that provides incentives for information revelation. The standard panoply of these informational imperfections also includes the possibility of “signaling” where the informed party takes actions to convince the other party of the purity of her motives. Finally, there is the well-known situation with a hidden action (or “moral hazard”), which brings the need for incentive contracts to share risk across parties, rewarding the probabilistic effects of the usually unobservable efforts.