Month: April 2025

Feifei Xu (Corvinus University) will present “The Impact of Socioeconomic Status, Mental Health Outcomes and COVID-19 Factors on Health-Related Quality of Life in Elderly Adults” on April 25th, 2025, at 10:30 AM, in room QA405.

Abstract:

This study examines the influence of socioeconomic factors, mental health outcomes, and COVID-19-related experiences on the health-related quality of life (HRQoL) of older Hungarian adults. Specifically, it explores the direct and indirect effects of socioeconomic status (SES) and COVID-19-related factors on HRQoL, with mental health outcomes acting as a mediator. A cross-sectional survey was conducted from May 25 to June 8, 2021, involving 398 participants aged 65 and older. Self-reported measures included the Visual Analog Scale (VAS) for HRQoL, Generalised Anxiety Disorder-7 (GAD-7) for anxiety, and Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9) for depression. Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) was used to analyze relationships between HRQoL and key predictors, with mental health outcomes examined as a mediator. SEM analysis revealed that gender was significantly associated with HRQoL, with females reporting higher HRQoL than males. SES factors were not direct predictors of HRQoL, but depressive symptoms strongly influenced HRQoL, while anxiety symptoms showed no significant association. COVID-19-related factors, particularly infection severity and quarantine status, significantly impacted HRQoL. These findings highlight the critical role of mental health as a mediator between SES, COVID-19-related factors, and HRQoL, emphasizing the need for targeted mental health interventions to support older adults.

Ina Taneva (University of Edinburgh) will present “Strategic Ignorance and Information Design” (with Tom Wiseman) on April 14th, 2025, at 10:30 AM, in room QA405.

Abstract:

We study information design in strategic settings when agents can publicly refuse to view their private signals. Ignoring the constraints that agents must be willing to view their signals may lead to substantial divergence between the designer’s intent and actual outcomes, even in the case where the designer seeks to maximize the agents’ payoffs. We introduce the appropriate equilibrium concept — ignorance-permissive Bayes correlated equilibrium — and characterize implementable distributions over states and actions. The designer’s optimal response to strategic ignorance generates qualitative properties that standard information design cannot: the designer may provide redundant or even counterproductive information, asymmetric information structures may be strictly optimal in symmetric environments, providing information conditional on players’ viewing choices rather than all at once may hurt the designer, and communication between players may help her. Optimality sometimes requires that players ignore their signals with positive probability.

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Gabriel Ziegler (University of Edinburgh) will present “Bounded Reasoning and Rationalizability” on April 4th, 2025, at 10:30 AM, in room QA405.

Abstract:

We examine the connections between bounded reasoning approaches in game theory—such as level-k and cognitive hierarchy models—using tools from epistemic game theory. We demonstrate that these classic models are subsumed by an overarching ∆-rationalizability framework, in which the ∆ restriction transparently constrains the first-order beliefs of bounded types only, thereby clarifying how agents reason. Our formalization retains the standard behavioral predictions of level-k and cognitive hierarchy models, while avoiding reliance on an exogenous bound on iterative reasoning. By substituting arbitrary iterative assumptions with precise belief restrictions, we provide a unified and transparent foundation for analyzing bounded rationality. These insights extend in a much more delicate way to dynamic settings, where we further explore a novel role of epistemic priority in such contexts.

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