Sabarwal, Department Host Kansas Workshop on Economic Theory
The Department of Economics continued to enhance its international reputation by recently hosting the annual Kansas Workshop on Economic Theory. That workshop, organized by Dr. Tarun Sabarwal and held at the Kansas Memorial Union on May 5, allowed top researchers and theoreticians from around the country and world to convene and present their latest findings while interacting with one another to provide additional constructive input.
One fascinating paper presented by University of Pennsylvania Ph.D. candidate Alice Gindin (“Dynamic Political Investigations: Obstruction and the Optimal Timing of Accusations”) developed a model exploring how an opposition party chooses to strategically release evidence-backed accusations against a rival political candidate, knowing that the accusation will trigger a formal investigation which the candidate may obstruct.
Ms. Gindin, who will be an Assistant Professor of Economics at Middlebury College, explained that the model made such obstruction costly but also slowed down the arrival time of incriminating information. The probability of election for the candidate under the microscope decreases as voters’ belief of his/her guilt increases; and if an investigation uncovers evidence of wrongdoing, legal penalties await. The research characterizes how the optimal obstruction changes over the course of an investigation. The next important variable involves the timing of the release of evidence to trigger an investigation. With a close election and relatively credible evidence (or when the opponent is the clear front-runner), the release is timed to happen just before the election – an October Surprise – which leaves the actual investigation no real time to search for additional evidence before voting occurs. But with a close election and weak evidence (or when the candidate releasing the evidence is the front-runner), evidence is released immediately to allow time for a more complete investigation. Obstruction interacts with this timing decision by making investigations less informative and inducing more October Surprises, which reduce voter information and welfare. The paper then concludes by considering two policies aimed at reducing obstruction – so-called “plea-bargaining” and extending investigations beyond election day.
Dr. Benard Cornet, KU’s own Oswald Distinguished Professor of Microeconomics, presented research (“Betting Markets”) on the development of parimutuel betting markets. Often characterized as markets for “betting among ourselves,” such markets are focused more on forecasting than gambling and are used in prediction markets on various aleatory events such as elections – either as a substitute or as a complement to more traditional pre-election polls.
Dr. Sabarwal, an acknowledged international authority on game theory who serves as Director of the Center for Analytical Research in Economics as well as professor of economics, has organized the KWET since 2009. He is Associate Editor for the prestigious International Journal of Economic Theory and serves on KU’s Public Scholars Group, an inter-disciplinary group of faculty focused on making the relevance of their scholarly research visible beyond academia. In 2021, he published a groundbreaking book (Monotone Games: A Unified Approach to Games with Strategic Complements and Substitutes, Palgrave Macmillan (Springer), 2021), which represents a significant contribution to game theory literature.