In my project, I intend to contribute to the growing literature of Incomplete Information in Macroeonomics.

The latter studies how frictions in expectations formation and in agents’ coordination affect the behavior of relevant aggregate variables (such as consumption, GDP, inflation) as well as its Welfare implications and optimal policymaking. The existing literature has contributed in three main directions. First, by providing evidence of Information Frictions. Second, by showing how Incomplete Information models can reproduce important stylized facts of the economy. Third, by exploring both optimal information dissemination policies and optimal monetary policy.  

Nevertheless, some relevant areas are yet to be deeply explored:

In my thesis, I attempt to fill these gaps simultaneously. I construct a model that allows me to study the interplays between Market Structure and Information Structure in a tractable way. I test the model’s predictions by exploiting a clear change in the information structure of the Italian Retail Gasoline Market (a clear addition of a public signal in the agents’ information set). Lastly, by estimating the model with data, I will be able to compare pre-policy and post-policy Welfare to quantify the Welfare effects of the policy.  

• Models of incomplete information are challenging to test and validate because they require a rare ideal scenario: a clearly identifiable change in the Information Structure that can be mapped to a theoretical model, along with accessible data from before and after the change to compare observed outcomes with the model's predictions
• Second, how does the interaction between the Information Structure (intensity of competition) and the Market Structure shape agents’ actions and Welfare?
• Third, because of the first point, we can rarely estimate the model and quantify the effects of information-altering policies. Moreover, we cannot quantify how such policies affect Welfare depending on the Market Structure precisely because we lack a model that does so.