Incentivizing Hidden Types in Secretary Problem

Abstract

We study a game between $N$ job applicants who incur a cost $c$ (relative to the job value) to reveal their type during interviews and an administrator who seeks to maximize the probability of hiring the best. We define a full learning equilibrium and prove its existence, uniqueness, and optimality. In equilibrium, the administrator accepts the current best applicant $n$ with probability $c$ if $n<n^{\ast }$ and with probability 1 if $n\ge n^{\ast }$ for a threshold $n^{\ast }$ independent of $c$. In contrast to the case without cost, where the success probability converges to $1/\mathrm{e}\approx 0.37$ as $N$ tends to infinity, with cost the success probability decays like $N^{-c}$.