The students will gain insights on the role of information in decision-making by individuals and groups, and on its impact on market interactions.

The focus of the course is on the role of information in a wide spectrum of examples and contexts, ranging from individual decision-making to collective choice, to strategic interactions between asymmetrically informed parties, to markets under asymmetric information.
The course launches with individual decision-making. It examines how new information is used to update decision-makers’ beliefs and revise their actions, culminating with the notion of the value of information. Next, the course turns to collective decision-making. It scrutinizes procedures for aggregating individual preferences and raises issues of efficiency, justice, strategic voting, and manipulations of private information. Finally, the course makes an excursion into the field of information economics. It looks at contract design to provide specific incentives: for instance, to the experts with superior knowledge to report their information faithfully, or to the employees to exert a certain level of effort. Finally, the course discusses the impact of asymmetric information on the insurance markets.

Reader and literature will be announced on Canvas .

• The level of this course is relatively high and preferably third year students should register.
• Knowledge and understanding of microeconomics (level comparable to "Microeconomics") and quantitative methods (level comparable to "Quantitative Methods III") is required.
• Exchange students need to follow a Bachelor in economics.
• Exchange students should have a good background in microeconomics to benefit optimally from the course.
• An advanced level of English.