{"title":"Hidden passing games","authors":"Elena Quercioli, Lones Smith","doi":"10.1007/s10058-024-00362-0","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p>We introduce random encounter matching games, where a hidden trait is sometimes unwittingly passed—either private and bad (like counterfeit money), or collective and bad (a disease), or hidden and good (rare coin), or collective and good (information). One optimally expends effort to avoid acquiring bad traits or trying to acquire good ones. The game shifts from strategic complements to substitutes changing from private to collective, or good to bad traits. A unique equilibrium exists in all cases, and coincides for collective bad and private good traits, and collective good and private bad traits. Equilibrium incidence can be a misleading signal of prevalence for bad traits at high prevalence: one cannot infer that counterfeiting is less severe when there is less passed counterfeit money, or prevalence is higher with more infections.\n</p>","PeriodicalId":44537,"journal":{"name":"Review of Economic Design","volume":"20 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3000,"publicationDate":"2024-07-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Review of Economic Design","FirstCategoryId":"96","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s10058-024-00362-0","RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q4","JCRName":"ECONOMICS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
We introduce random encounter matching games, where a hidden trait is sometimes unwittingly passed—either private and bad (like counterfeit money), or collective and bad (a disease), or hidden and good (rare coin), or collective and good (information). One optimally expends effort to avoid acquiring bad traits or trying to acquire good ones. The game shifts from strategic complements to substitutes changing from private to collective, or good to bad traits. A unique equilibrium exists in all cases, and coincides for collective bad and private good traits, and collective good and private bad traits. Equilibrium incidence can be a misleading signal of prevalence for bad traits at high prevalence: one cannot infer that counterfeiting is less severe when there is less passed counterfeit money, or prevalence is higher with more infections.
期刊介绍:
Review of Economic Design comprises the creative art and science of inventing, analyzing and testing economic as well as social and political institutions and mechanisms aimed at achieving individual objectives and social goals. In this age of Economic Design, the accumulated traditions and wealth of knowledge in normative and positive economics and the strategic analysis of game theory are applied with novel ideas in the creative tasks of designing and assembling diverse legal-economic instruments. These include constitutions and other assignments of rights, mechanisms for allocation or regulation, tax and incentive schemes, contract forms, voting and other choice aggregation procedures, markets, auctions, organizational forms, such as partnerships, together with supporting membership and other property rights, and information systems. These designs, the methods of analysis used in their scrutiny, as well as the mathematical techniques and empirical knowledge they employ, along with comparative assessments of the performance of known economic systems and implemented designs, all of these form natural components of the subject matter of Economic Design.
Officially cited as: Rev Econ Design