Curriculum Vitae

Placement Director: Neil Wallace
    (814) 863-3805
    neilw@psu.edu

Contact Information:
Byung Soo Lee
  Office: (814) 865-1108
  Home: (814) 682-6805
E-mail: byungsoolee@psu.edu
Website: http://www.econ.psu.edu/~bul121/

CITIZENSHIP:

• Republic of Korea (F-1 Visa)

EDUCATION:

• B.S., Economics and Computer Science, Duke University, 2003
• M.A., Economics, Duke University, 2006
• Ph.D., Economics, The Pennsylvania State University, expected June 2010

PH.D. THESIS:

• “Essays in Game Theory”
  Thesis Advisor:  Edward Green

FIELDS:

• Primary: Game Theory

PAPERS:

• “Epistemic Foundations of Iterated Admissibility” (Job Market Paper)
• Rationalizing Payoff-Dominant Outcomes”

AWARDS:

• Outstanding Recitation Instructor, Fall 2008, Department of Economics

TEACHING EXPERIENCE:

• Instructor, Summer 2008
• Courses: Microeconomics
• Teaching Assistant, Fall 2008 – Fall 2009
  • Courses: Macroeconomic Theory (Graduate), Monetary Economics, Microeconomics, Game Theory

RESEARCH EXPERIENCE:

• Research Assistant, Spring 2009 – Summer 2009 for Professor Edward Green

REFERENCES:

• Professor Edward Green (Thesis Advisor) +1 (814) 865 8493, edgreen@psu.edu
  415 Kern Graduate Bldg.
  Department of Economics
  The Pennsylvania State University
  University Park, PA 16802

• Professor Kalyan Chatterjee +1 (814) 865 6050, kchatterjee@psu.edu
  504 Kern Graduate Bldg.
  Department of Economics
  The Pennsylvania State University
  University Park, PA 16802

• Professor Tymofiy Mylovanov +1 (814) 865 5781, txm41@psu.edu
  419 Kern Graduate Bldg.
  Department of Economics
  The Pennsylvania State UniversityUniversity Park, PA 16802

THESIS ABSTRACT

Essay 1.“Epistemic Foundations of Iterated Admissibility” (Job Market Paper)

How can we justify the play of iteratively admissible strategies in a game as a consequence of the players’ rationality? Brandenburger, Friedenberg, and Keisler (2008) models beliefs as lexicographic probability systems toward that end. If rational players never rule out any scenarios, then they will avoid inadmissible (i.e., weakly dominated) strategies. Under this definition of rationality, Brandenburger et al. showed that, when the set of beliefs is complete (i.e., each lexicographic probability system is a possible belief), iteratively admissible strategies will be played if each player is rational, each player thinks the other players are rational, and so on. They leave as an open question whether the condition on interactive beliefs about rationality, called rationality and common assumption of rationality, and completeness of beliefs can be satisfied simultaneously. I answer this question in the affirmative. Thus, an epistemic foundation for iterated admissibility is provided.

Essay 2. “Rationalizing Payoff-Dominant Outcomes”

I modify two-player simultaneous-move games with a unique payoff-dominant strategy profile by allowing each player to publicly discard any of her original strategic options in turn before play begins. In this setting, I show that extensive-form rationalizable (EFR) profiles, as defined in Pearce (1984), have payoff-dominant outcomes. Furthermore, a strategy profile in which no player makes any commitments is EFR. Thus, the model is interpreted as one of payoff-dominant focal-point formation via forward induction, which is captured by EFR. The result is analogous to that in Ben-Porath and Dekel's (1992) model of money-burning games. That the order of beliefs required to obtain payoff-dominant outcomes is uniformly bounded at three across all games is an advantage of the model in this paper over the money-burning approach, which may require the use of arbitrarily high orders of beliefs to obtain the same result. A limitation of this paper, also shared by the money-burning model, is that the prediction of payoff-dominant play is not robust to the addition of players.