“正午阳光——青年学者论坛”是金融学院定期举办的以院内师生参与为主的学术交流活动，为全院专家学者之间、师生之间、南开金融与国际国内学术界之间提供了难得的交流机会。本学期“正午阳光”论坛初心不改，扬帆远航再出发，致力于营造学院学校科研氛围，推动师生学术科研水平不断提升！

2026年春季学期 “正午阳光——青年学者论坛”第1期活动安排如下：

讲座题目：Front-Loaded Experimentation Under Delegation: Forward-Reverse Stopping Contracts

主讲人：刘子先

南开大学金融学院博士后。博士毕业于波士顿大学经济系。研究领域：机制设计，博弈论。

讲座时间：2026年3月19日（周四）12:00 - 13:30

讲座地点：金融学院116教室

内容摘要

We study a dynamic delegation problem in which a long-lived principal assigns experimentation tasks to short-lived agents, each active for only one period. The principal values experimentation more due to her longer horizon. We model this as a contextual bandit problem with type-dependent Poisson outcomes: one agent type has a known success probability, while the other is uncertain (either high or low) and is gradually learned. When the principal observes the agent’s type, the first-best policy features experimentation cycles, with phases of engagement, abandonment, and revival driven by belief dynamics and finite horizons. When the agent’s type is privately known, the optimal delegation rule takes the form of a forward-reverse stopping contract (FRSC) that uses the timing of the risky task as a screening device. Relative to the principal’s first best, the optimal FRSC generates both over- and under-experimentation, as the principal trades off current efficiency against future learning.