About

Dong Wei is an Assistant Professor in the Economics Department within the Social Sciences Division. His research interests include microeconomic theory, information economics, and dynamic games. He holds a Ph.D. in Economics from UC Berkeley, an M.Phil. in Economics from NYU Stern, and a B.Econ. from Tsinghua University. Dong Wei is engaged in teaching and research activities related to his expertise in economic theory, contributing to the academic community through his scholarly work and departmental involvement.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Economics
• Microeconomics
• Artificial Intelligence
• Mathematical economics
• Computer network
• Psychology
• Mathematics
• Social psychology

Selected publications

• (Reverse) Price Discrimination with Information Design

  American Economic Journal Microeconomics · 2024-04-29 · 12 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  A seller markets a good to a customer whose willingness to pay depends on his private type and the good's quality. The seller designs a screening mechanism that specifies both transfers and information revealed about quality. We show that the optimal mechanism can be implemented by a menu of price-experiment pairs, featuring both price discrimination and information discrimination: buyers with higher private types face lower prices and receive less discerning positive signals. Moreover, we demonstrate the complementarity between these two forms of discrimination. Information design facilitates surplus creation on the extensive margin, but causes surplus destruction on the intensive margin. (JEL D21, D42, D82, L15, M31)

  PublisherDOI

• Turning the Ratchet: Dynamic Screening with Multiple Agents

  arXiv (Cornell University) · 2024-05-07

  preprintOpen accessSenior author

  We study a dynamic contracting problem with multiple agents and limited commitment. A principal seeks to screen efficient agents using one-period contracts, but is tempted to revise contract terms upon knowing an agent's type. Alterations of contracts are observable and, hence, whenever past promises are broken future information revelation stops. We provide necessary and sufficient conditions under which information revelation can be fostered. For sufficiently patient players, private information is either never revealed or fully revealed in a sequential manner. Optimal contracts provide high-powered incentives upon initial disclosure of an agent's type, and rewards for information revelation vanish over time.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Research on the Carbon Emission Reduction Effect of Green Taxation under China’s Fiscal Decentralization

  Sustainability · 2023-03-04 · 14 citations

  articleOpen access1st author

  Using the spatial Durbin model, this study investigates, systematically, the link between green taxes and carbon emissions and the influence of green taxation on carbon emissions under fiscal decentralization in the context of the shift in performance evaluation of the local government. The results demonstrate a positive correlation at different stages of the performance appraisal. Fiscal expenditure has dual effects on carbon emissions at different stages of environmental assessments. It additionally strengthens the positive effects of green taxation on carbon emissions, with improvements in economic development. Further analysis demonstrates an interaction between fiscal decentralization and environmental taxes and fees, effectively reducing carbon emissions. The interaction between fiscal decentralization and other green taxes, except the environmental bonded tax, has no significant impact on emissions. This study finally proposes a series of policy recommendations to reduce carbon dioxide from the perspective of reasonable green tax formulation and fiscal decentralization. These include: increasing environmental taxes, modifying present resource and environmental protection taxes, adopting new environmental taxes gradually, enhancing the current tax system, and enhancing the “greening” of tax income. In addition, this study proposes reforms to the performance evaluation method within the present fiscal decentralization framework.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Research on the Policy Effect of Property Tax Reform: Take the Pilot Reforms in Chongqing and Shanghai as Examples

  Discrete Dynamics in Nature and Society · 2022-01-01 · 6 citations

  articleOpen access1st author

  It has been ten years since the implementation of property tax reform in Shanghai and Chongqing. With the continuous promotion of tax reform, the central government clearly put forward the decision to accelerate the pilot real estate tax reform in 2021. Every piece of news about the pilot and promotion of property tax reform attracts close attention from people in related fields and becomes a hot topic on the Internet and media. Reform policies are carefully formulated and improved, and the relationship between reform policies, market demand, and people’s livelihood is properly handled so that the real estate market will develop in a healthy and stable manner and have a significant impact on the economy and society. This article mainly starts with the history of property tax development, reform priorities, and comparison with property tax policies of other countries. It takes Chongqing and Shanghai as the research objects, selects several typical factors, and uses multiple linear regression models for analysis. This article studies the impact of China’s property tax pilot on the real estate industry and its effects from both theoretical and empirical aspects and discusses the policy effects of the property tax policy pilot. The levy of real estate tax has a certain effect in a short period of time, but it is not ideal in the long run. Studying the economic effects of Shanghai‐Chongqing property tax is conducive to perfecting China’s property tax reform and promoting the healthy development of real estate market and economic and social development.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Learning from Manipulable Signals

  American Economic Review · 2022-11-28 · 8 citations

  articleSenior author

  We study a dynamic stopping game between a principal and an agent. The principal gradually learns about the agent's private type from a noisy performance measure that can be manipulated by the agent via a costly and hidden action. We fully characterize the unique Markov equilibrium of this game. We find that terminations/market crashes are often preceded by a spike in manipulation intensity and (expected) performance. Moreover, due to endogenous signal manipulation, too much transparency can inhibit learning and harm the principal. As the players get arbitrarily patient, the principal elicits no useful information from the observed signal. (JEL C73, D82, D83, G24, M13)

  PublisherDOI

• Technical Change, Moral Hazard, and the Decentralization Penalty

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2020-01-01 · 2 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Optimal Attention Management: A Tractable Framework

  Games and Economic Behavior · 2020-01-01 · 5 citations

  preprintOpen accessSenior authorCorresponding
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Essays in Dynamic Games and Information Economics

  eScholarship (California Digital Library) · 2020-01-01

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  This dissertation consists of three chapters, studying questions in dynamic games and information economics. These chapters represent a selection of my research conducted during the period of my PhD studies.Chapter 1 is motivated by the "starting small" phenomena which are prevalent in long-term relationships. For example, in credit relationships, it is often observed that the credit limit granted to a borrower by a lender tends to increase over time conditional on satisfactory repayment histories. Why does this happen? To provide a novel explanation, we study a repeated lender-borrower game with anonymous re-matching; that is, once an ongoing relationship is terminated, players are rematched with new partners and prior histories are unobservable. We propose an equilibrium refinement based on two assumptions: (a) default implies termination of the current relationship; (b) in a given relationship, a better loan-repayment history implies weakly higher continuation values for both parties. This refinement captures the idea of "justifiable punishments" in repeated games. We show that if players are patient enough and re-matching is sufficiently likely, then the loan size is strictly increasing over time along the equilibrium path of all non-trivial equilibria. As such, this chapter helps explain gradualism in long-term relationships, especially credit relationships.Chapter 2, based on the joint work with Elliot Lipnowski and Laurent Mathevet, concerns the optimal design of information transmission protocols when the information recipient is rationally inattentive. We develop a model of a well-intentioned principal who provides information to a rationally inattentive agent. Processing information is costly to the agent, but the principal does not internalize this cost. In a world with two states, it is shown that providing full information is universally optimal for the principal, even though the agent will typically not pay full attention. We then introduce a tractable specification with quadratic payoffs and study optimal information provision when full disclosure is not optimal. We characterize incentive compatible information policies, that is, those to which the agent willingly pays full attention. In a leading example with three states, optimal disclosure involves information distortion at intermediate costs of attention. As the cost increases, optimal information abruptly changes from downplaying the state to exaggerating the state.Chapter 3 naturally extends the theoretical framework introduced in Chapter 2 to a different but relevant setting where the decision interests between the sender and the receiver of information are misaligned. In our model, a Sender (seller) tries to persuade a rationally inattentive Receiver (buyer) to take a particular action (e.g., buying). Learning is costly for the Receiver who can choose to process strictly less information than what the sender provides. In a binary-action binary-state model, we show that optimal disclosure involves information distortion, but to a lesser extent than the case without learning costs; meanwhile, the Receiver processes less information than what he would under full disclosure. While the Sender is always worse off when facing a less attentive Receiver, the amount of information processed in equilibrium varies with learning costs in a non-monotone fashion. As such, this chapter sheds light on how to persuade a rationally inattentive decision maker.

  Publisher

• Persuasion under costly learning

  Journal of Mathematical Economics · 2020 · 19 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Computer Science
  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Computer Science
  PublisherDOI

• Attention Management

  American Economic Review Insights · 2020 · 25 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  • Computer Science
  • Economics
  • Microeconomics

  Attention costs can cause some information to be ignored and decisions to be imperfect. Can we improve the material welfare of a rationally inattentive agent by restricting his information in the first place? In our model, a well-intentioned principal provides information to an agent for whom information is costly to process, but the principal does not internalize this cost. We show that full information is universally optimal if and only if the environment comprises one issue. With multiple issues, attention management becomes optimal: the principal restricts some information to induce the agent to pay attention to other aspects. (JEL D82, D83, D91)

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Elliot Lipnowski

  6 shared

• Laurent Mathevet

  European University Institute

  6 shared

• Thomas Marschak

  3 shared

• Lucas Maestri

  2 shared

• Mehmet Ekmekçi

  2 shared

• Jian Sun

  2 shared

• Brett Green

  Washington University in St. Louis

  2 shared

• Ruochen Liang

  Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics

  1 shared