Speaker: 周臻 (Zhen Zhou)

Title: Biased Wisdom from the Crowd

Schedule: April 17, Mon 1:30-3:00 PM

Location: 诚明楼（Chengming Hall） RM 315

 

Introduction：周臻博士清华五道口金融学院（中国人民银行研究生部）副教授，自2016年起担任该校教职员工。此外，他还担任国家金融研究所货币政策和金融稳定研究中心的研究员和副主任。他的主要研究兴趣是了解金融恐慌以及如何设计监管政策来预防它们。他最近致力于开发理论模型，从信息角度研究金融监管、公司政策和宏观经济学。周博士还运用实验方法理解有关协调和信息传递的战略决策，并对中国银行体系进行实证研究。

周博士曾在多著名学术期刊发表研究成果如the American Economic Review, Games and Economic Behavior, and the Journal of Economic Theory。

 

Abstract: This paper studies information aggregation through the strategic behavior of privately informed agents under crowdfunding. In crowdfunding campaigns, agents pay a fixed contribution and receive a common return conditional on the project attracting sufficient investment. Therefore, an investment pledge is consequential only if the total investment exceeds the funding threshold. This consequentiality condition allows agents to benefit from the wisdom of others. In equilibrium, agents discount their individual wisdom and may invest despite their private information suggesting otherwise. Information aggregation does, however, have a distinctive bias: crowdfunding is more effective at endorsing desirable projects than screening out undesirable ones. Even as crowd size grows indefinitely, the false-positive error persists, while the false-negative error approaches zero. We further distinguish crowdfunding from voting and coordination games by comparing consequentiality with pivotality and regime-change conditions, and extend our model to account for private valuations, fixed funding goals, subscription costs, donations, and dynamic learning.