@techreport{Barde2011Ignorance,
abstract = {An information-theoretic thought experiment is developed to provide a methodology for predicting endowment distributions in the absence of information on agent preferences. The allocation problem is first presented as a stylised knapsack problem. Although this knapsack allocation is intractable, the social planner can nevertheless make precise predictions concerning the endowment distribution by using its information-theoretic structure. By construction these predictions do not rest on the rationality of agents. It is also shown, however, that the knapsack problem is equivalent to a congestion game under weak assumptions, which means that the planner can nevertheless evaluate the optimality of the unobserved allocation.},
address = {Canterbury},
author = {Sylvain Barde},
copyright = {http://www.econstor.eu/dspace/Nutzungsbedingungen},
keywords = {C02; C62; D51; D83; 330; Information theoretic measure; knapsack problem; congestion game; potential function},
language = {eng},
number = {11,03},
publisher = {Univ. of Kent, School of Economics},
title = {Ignorance is bliss: Rationality, information and equilibrium},
type = {School of Economics discussion papers},
url = {http://hdl.handle.net/10419/50621},
year = {2011}
}
