论文标题
拥挤社会服务的信息设计:基于最佳需求的说服力
Information Design for Congested Social Services: Optimal Need-Based Persuasion
论文作者
论文摘要
我们研究信息设计在减少社会服务拥堵的有效性,以满足需求水平的用户。在没有价格歧视和集中入学的情况下,提供商依靠共享有关等待时间的信息来提高福利。我们考虑了一种风格化的模型,其私人外部选项的异质用户是不同的:低需求的用户可以接受社会服务的外部选择,而高需求的用户没有可行的外部选项。到达后,用户决定通过加入不可观察的先到优先级队列,或者离开并寻求她的外部选择来等待服务。为了减少交通拥堵并改善社会成果,服务提供商试图说服更多的低需求用户利用其外部选择,从而更好地为高需求的用户服务。我们表征了帕累托最佳信号传导机制,并将其福利结果与几个基准进行比较。我们表明,如果这两种类型都是绝大多数人口,则信息设计并不能为共享全部信息或没有信息提供改进。另一方面,当种群是两种类型的混合体时,信息设计不仅占主导地位,而且在某些制度中,帕累托(Pareto)的福利也与“第一最好的”(即帕累托(Pareto)优美的集中式录取政策具有与用户类型的知识相同的福利。
We study the effectiveness of information design in reducing congestion in social services catering to users with varied levels of need. In the absence of price discrimination and centralized admission, the provider relies on sharing information about wait times to improve welfare. We consider a stylized model with heterogeneous users who differ in their private outside options: low-need users have an acceptable outside option to the social service, whereas high-need users have no viable outside option. Upon arrival, a user decides to wait for the service by joining an unobservable first-come-first-serve queue, or leave and seek her outside option. To reduce congestion and improve social outcomes, the service provider seeks to persuade more low-need users to avail their outside option, and thus better serve high-need users. We characterize the Pareto-optimal signaling mechanisms and compare their welfare outcomes against several benchmarks. We show that if either type is the overwhelming majority of the population, information design does not provide improvement over sharing full information or no information. On the other hand, when the population is a mixture of the two types, information design not only Pareto dominates full-information and no-information mechanisms, in some regimes it also achieves the same welfare as the "first-best", i.e., the Pareto-optimal centralized admission policy with knowledge of users' types.