Centre for Experimental Methods and Behavioural Research (EMBR) Seminar with Prof Todd Kaplan (Exeter & Haifa)

Increasing Employment with Coarse Information 

Todd Kaplan with Surajeet Chakravarty and Luke Lindsay

Abstract

We investigate whether an agency can increase employment by strategically coarsening information about workers’ skills and abilities to employers. Theoretically, we find that such an increase is possible, and a range of employment levels can be supported in equilibrium. We test this possibility using laboratory experiments under three conditions: full information, coarse and verifiable information, and coarse but not verifiable information. We find that, compared with full information, both treatments with coarse information increase employment at the expense of the employers’ profits but not to the highest theoretically achievable levels. We also find that verifiability affects several aspects of behavior.

About the speaker

Professor Todd Kaplan is a Professor of Economics at the University of Haifa (faculty member since 2007) and a Professor of Economics at the University of Exeter (faculty member since 2000).

He specializes in Economic Theory and Behavioral Economics. He has a BSc from California Institute of Technology (Economics and Engineering & Applied Science) as well as an MA an PhD in Economics from the University of Minnesota.

He has received research grants from the Nuffield Foundation, British Academy, iFree Foundation, ESRC, Leverhulme Foundation, the Israeli Ministry of Science and Technology, and the Israeli Science Foundation. He was a co-winner for the Economics Network 2009 e-learning award for developing teaching resources in a grant from HEFCE. He is an Associate Editor of the Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics. He cofounded the FEELE experimental lab at Exeter in 2004, now a world-leading lab, and started Exeter Prize in 2012. He was the Department Chair at Haifa, 2017-2021.   

He has published 50 scientific articles in many of the world-leading Economics journals including the American Economic Review, Management Science, Economic Journal, RAND Journal of Economics, International Economic Review, Journal of the European Economic Association, Journal of International Economics, Journal of Public Economics, Games and Economic Behavior, Experimental Economics, European Economic Review, and Economic Theory.

He is known, for a computerized strategy for competing in experimental trading markets known as the “Kaplan strategy”, as well as one of the early methods for finding Nash equilibria. His theoretical work spans auctions, contests, voting, and mechanism design. His contributions in experiments cover prediction markets, bank runs, and cooperation.