Search results for "C72"
showing 10 items of 14 documents
Conflict, Evolution, Hegemony, and the Power of the State
2013
In a model of evolution driven by conflict between societies more powerful states have an advantage. When the influence of outsiders is small we show that this results in a tendency to hegemony. In a simple example in which institutions differ in their “exclusiveness” we find that these hegemonies will be inefficiently “extractive” in the sense of having inefficiently high taxes, high compensation for state officials, and low welfare.
Conflict and segregation in networks: An experiment on the interplay between individual preferences and social influence
2016
We examine the interplay between a person's individual preference and the social influence others exert. We provide a model of network relationships with conflicting preferences, where individuals are better off coordinating with those around them, but where not all have a preference for the same action. We test our model in an experiment, varying the level of conflicting preferences between individuals. Our findings suggest that preferences are more salient than social influence, under conflicting preferences: subjects relate mainly with others who have the same preferences. This leads to two undesirable outcomes: network segregation and social inefficiency. The same force that helps peopl…
Endogenous firm asymmetry and cooperative R&D in linear duopoly with spillovers
2005
In a linear model ofcost reducing R&D/Cournot competition, firm asymmetry is shown to be sustainable as subgame perfect Nash equilibrium with R&D competition only ifthe productivity of research is sufficiently large relative to the benefits from imitation. In such a case, industry-wide cost reduction and firms asymmetry are increasing and decreasing functions of the spillover rate, respectively. In the absence of spillovers, a symmetric joint lab generates higher consumer surplus and social welfare than a pair ofasymmetric competitors. If spillovers are not too small, asymmetric R&D competition is advantageous toconsumers, but not to firms.
Collusion Constrained Equilibrium
2018
First published: 01 February 2018 This is an open access article licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License 4.0 (http://econtheory.org) We study collusion within groups in noncooperative games. The primitives are the preferences of the players, their assignment to nonoverlapping groups, and the goals of the groups. Our notion of collusion is that a group coordinates the play of its members among different incentive compatible plans to best achieve its goals. Unfortunately, equilibria that meet this requirement need not exist. We instead introduce the weaker notion of collusion constrained equilibrium. This allows groups to put positive probability on alternatives …
Codification schemes and finite automata
2000
This paper is a note on how Information Theory and Codification Theory are helpful in the computational design both of communication protocols and strategy sets in the framework of finitely repeated games played by boundedly rational agents. More precisely, we show the usefulness of both theories to improve the existing automata bounds of Neyman¿s (1998) work on finitely repeated games played by finite automata.
Heterogeneous network games: Conflicting preferences
2013
Proceeding at: 2nd Annual UECE Lisbon Meeting: Game Theory and Applications, took place 2010, November, 4-6, in Lisbon (Portugal). The event Web site http://pascal.iseg.utl.pt/~uece/lisbonmeetings2010/ In many economic situations, a player pursues coordination or anti-coordination with her neighbors on a network, but she also has intrinsic preferences among the available options. We here introduce a model which allows to analyze this issue by means of a simple framework in which players endowed with an idiosyncratic identity interact on a social network through strategic complements or substitutes. We classify the possible types of Nash equilibria under complete information, finding two thr…
Nash codes for noisy channels
2012
This paper studies the stability of communication protocols that deal with transmission errors. We consider a coordination game between an informed sender and an uninformed decision maker, the receiver, who communicate over a noisy channel. The sender's strategy, called a code, maps states of nature to signals. The receiver's best response is to decode the received channel output as the state with highest expected receiver payoff. Given this decoding, an equilibrium or "Nash code" results if the sender encodes every state as prescribed. We show two theorems that give sufficient conditions for Nash codes. First, a receiver-optimal code defines a Nash code. A second, more surprising observati…
Multiproduct trading with a common agent under complete information: Existence and characterization of Nash equilibrium
2014
This paper focuses on oligopolistic markets in which indivisible goods are sold by multiproduct firms to a continuum of homogeneous buyers, with measure normalized to one, who have preferences over bundles of products. Our analysis contributes to the literature on private, delegated agency games with complete information, extending the insights by Chiesa and Denicolò (2009) to multiproduct markets with indivisibilities and where the agent's preferences need not be monotone. By analyzing a kind of extended contract schedules -mixed bundling prices- that discriminate on exclusivity, the paper shows that efficient equilibria always exist in such settings. There may also exist inefficient equil…
Reciprocity, matching and conditional cooperation in two public goods games
2005
Previous experimental and empirical evidence has identified social preferences in the voluntary provision of public goods. A number of competing models of such preferences have been proposed. We provide evidence for one model of behavior in these games, reciprocity (or matching, or conditional cooperation). Consistent with previous research, we find that participants in the voluntary contribution mechanism attempt to match the contributions of others in their group. We also examine participants in a related game with different equilibria, the weakest-link mechanism. Here, in contrast, participants contribute so as to match the minimum contribution of others in their group.
Endogenous R&D Symmetry in Linear Duopoly with One-way Spillovers
2005
A duopoly model of cost reducing R&D-Cournot market competition is extended to encompass endogenous timing of R&D investments. Under the assumption that R&D spillovers are zero under simultaneous choices of R&D and only flow from the R&D leader to the follower under sequential choices, sequential and simultaneous play at the R&D stage are compared in order to assess the role of technological externalities in stimulating or attenuating endogenous firm asymmetry. The only timing structure of the R&D stage sustainable as subgame–perfect Nash equilibrium involves simultaneous play and thus zero spillovers.