We consider a model of third-degree price discrimination where the seller's product valuation is unknown to the market designer, who aims to maximize buyer surplus by revealing buyer valuation information. Our main result shows that the regret is bounded by a -fraction of the optimal buyer surplus when the seller has zero valuation for the product. This bound is attained by randomly drawing a seller valuation and applying the segmentation of Bergemann et al. (2015) with respect to the drawn valuation. We show that this bound is tight in the case of binary buyer valuation.
{"title":"Robust price discrimination","authors":"Itai Arieli , Yakov Babichenko , Omer Madmon , Moshe Tennenholtz","doi":"10.1016/j.geb.2025.09.006","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.geb.2025.09.006","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>We consider a model of third-degree price discrimination where the seller's product valuation is unknown to the market designer, who aims to maximize buyer surplus by revealing buyer valuation information. Our main result shows that the regret is bounded by a <span><math><mfrac><mrow><mn>1</mn></mrow><mrow><mi>e</mi></mrow></mfrac></math></span>-fraction of the optimal buyer surplus when the seller has zero valuation for the product. This bound is attained by randomly drawing a seller valuation and applying the segmentation of Bergemann et al. (2015) with respect to the drawn valuation. We show that this bound is tight in the case of binary buyer valuation.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48291,"journal":{"name":"Games and Economic Behavior","volume":"154 ","pages":"Pages 377-395"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2025-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145266863","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-09-26DOI: 10.1016/j.geb.2025.09.005
Saltuk Ozerturk , Huseyin Yildirim
We examine team incentives in environments with positive spillovers and rewards based on ex-post public credit for collective success. Compared to the ex-ante efficient credit allocation that maximizes the team's overall payoff, ex-post credit distorts individual incentives: higher-ability or lower-cost agents receive excessive credit and overexert effort when spillovers are low, but are under-credited and insufficiently motivated when spillovers are high. To address these inefficiencies, organizations may optimally limit spillovers by restricting peer communication or reducing transparency in teamwork. Moreover, concerns about credit-sharing can deter agents from inviting collaborators or selecting the most capable partners when leading projects.
{"title":"Who gets the credit? Credit attribution, spillovers, and inefficiency in teams","authors":"Saltuk Ozerturk , Huseyin Yildirim","doi":"10.1016/j.geb.2025.09.005","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.geb.2025.09.005","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>We examine team incentives in environments with positive spillovers and rewards based on ex-post public credit for collective success. Compared to the ex-ante efficient credit allocation that maximizes the team's overall payoff, ex-post credit distorts individual incentives: higher-ability or lower-cost agents receive excessive credit and overexert effort when spillovers are low, but are under-credited and insufficiently motivated when spillovers are high. To address these inefficiencies, organizations may optimally limit spillovers by restricting peer communication or reducing transparency in teamwork. Moreover, concerns about credit-sharing can deter agents from inviting collaborators or selecting the most capable partners when leading projects.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48291,"journal":{"name":"Games and Economic Behavior","volume":"154 ","pages":"Pages 246-266"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2025-09-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145220902","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Information unraveling is an elegant theoretical argument suggesting that private information is voluntarily and fully revealed in many circumstances. However, the experimental literature has documented many cases of incomplete unraveling and has suggested limited depth of reasoning on the part of senders as a behavioral explanation. To test this explanation, we modify the design of existing unraveling games along two dimensions. In contrast to the baseline setting with simultaneous moves, we introduce a variant where decision-making is essentially sequential. Second, we vary the cost of disclosure, resulting in a 2×2 treatment design. Both sequential decision-making and low disclosure costs are suitable for reducing the demands on subjects' level-k reasoning. The data confirm that sequential decision-making and low disclosure costs lead to more disclosure, and there is virtually full disclosure in the treatment that combines both. A calibrated level-k model makes quantitative predictions, including precise treatment level and player-specific revelation rates, and these predictions organize the data well. The timing of decisions provides further insights into the treatment-specific unraveling process.
{"title":"Information unraveling and limited depth of reasoning","authors":"Volker Benndorf , Dorothea Kübler , Hans-Theo Normann","doi":"10.1016/j.geb.2025.09.004","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.geb.2025.09.004","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Information unraveling is an elegant theoretical argument suggesting that private information is voluntarily and fully revealed in many circumstances. However, the experimental literature has documented many cases of incomplete unraveling and has suggested limited depth of reasoning on the part of senders as a behavioral explanation. To test this explanation, we modify the design of existing unraveling games along two dimensions. In contrast to the baseline setting with simultaneous moves, we introduce a variant where decision-making is essentially sequential. Second, we vary the cost of disclosure, resulting in a 2×2 treatment design. Both sequential decision-making and low disclosure costs are suitable for reducing the demands on subjects' level-<em>k</em> reasoning. The data confirm that sequential decision-making and low disclosure costs lead to more disclosure, and there is virtually full disclosure in the treatment that combines both. A calibrated level-<em>k</em> model makes quantitative predictions, including precise treatment level and player-specific revelation rates, and these predictions organize the data well. The timing of decisions provides further insights into the treatment-specific unraveling process.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48291,"journal":{"name":"Games and Economic Behavior","volume":"154 ","pages":"Pages 267-284"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2025-09-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145266858","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-09-19DOI: 10.1016/j.geb.2025.09.003
Mark Whitmeyer
A natural way of quantifying the “amount of information” in decision problems yields a globally concave value for information. Another (in contrast, adversarial) way almost never does.
{"title":"A concavity in the value of information","authors":"Mark Whitmeyer","doi":"10.1016/j.geb.2025.09.003","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.geb.2025.09.003","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>A natural way of quantifying the “amount of information” in decision problems yields a globally concave value for information. Another (in contrast, adversarial) way almost never does.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48291,"journal":{"name":"Games and Economic Behavior","volume":"154 ","pages":"Pages 200-207"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2025-09-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145119424","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-09-18DOI: 10.1016/j.geb.2025.09.002
Anna Bogomolnaia , Artem Baklanov , Elizaveta Victorova
A set of kn indivisible items is to be allocated to n agents; each agent has to get exactly k items, and agents have additive utilities over bundles. Can one find an efficient and approximately fair allocation? In this setting, we introduce new notions of approximate fairness, based on exchange of two single objects, and compare them to the “traditional” ones based on disregarding one object.
Our model and new fairness properties are insensitive to positive affine transformations of utilities, hence, there is no need for a separate treatment of “goods”, “bads”, and “mixed objects”. A famous Round Robin rule fares very well on all fairness accounts, but fails efficiency, while rules based on collective welfare maximization (like Nash or Leximin) cannot guarantee fairness, except on several special sub-domains (two agents, identical valuations, or binary utilities). EFx and PROPx still appear too strong. Traditional notions of approximate fairness do not allow for more positive results either.
{"title":"Teams formation: Efficiency and approximate fairness","authors":"Anna Bogomolnaia , Artem Baklanov , Elizaveta Victorova","doi":"10.1016/j.geb.2025.09.002","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.geb.2025.09.002","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>A set of <em>kn</em> indivisible items is to be allocated to <em>n</em> agents; each agent has to get exactly <em>k</em> items, and agents have additive utilities over bundles. Can one find an efficient and approximately fair allocation? In this setting, we introduce new notions of approximate fairness, based on exchange of two single objects, and compare them to the “traditional” ones based on disregarding one object.</div><div>Our model and new fairness properties are insensitive to positive affine transformations of utilities, hence, there is no need for a separate treatment of “goods”, “bads”, and “mixed objects”. A famous Round Robin rule fares very well on all fairness accounts, but fails efficiency, while rules based on collective welfare maximization (like Nash or Leximin) cannot guarantee fairness, except on several special sub-domains (two agents, identical valuations, or binary utilities). EFx and PROPx still appear too strong. Traditional notions of approximate fairness do not allow for more positive results either.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48291,"journal":{"name":"Games and Economic Behavior","volume":"154 ","pages":"Pages 226-245"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2025-09-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145159408","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-09-18DOI: 10.1016/j.geb.2025.09.001
Haris Aziz, Patrick Lederer, Xinhang Lu, Mashbat Suzuki, Jeremy Vollen
In approval-based budget division, a budget needs to be distributed to some candidates based on the voters' approval ballots over these candidates. In the pursuit of a simple, consistent, and approximately fair rule for this setting, we introduce the maximum payment rule (). Under this rule, each voter controls a part of the budget and, in each step, the corresponding voters allocate their entire budget to the candidate approved by the largest number of voters with non-zero budget. We show that meets our criteria as it satisfies monotonicity and a demanding population consistency condition and gives a 2-approximation to a fairness notion called average fair share (AFS). Moreover, we generalize to the class of sequential payment rules and prove that it is the most desirable rule within this class: nearly all other sequential payment rules fail monotonicity while offering only small improvements in the approximation ratio to AFS.
{"title":"Approximately fair and population consistent budget division via simple payment schemes","authors":"Haris Aziz, Patrick Lederer, Xinhang Lu, Mashbat Suzuki, Jeremy Vollen","doi":"10.1016/j.geb.2025.09.001","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.geb.2025.09.001","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>In approval-based budget division, a budget needs to be distributed to some candidates based on the voters' approval ballots over these candidates. In the pursuit of a simple, consistent, and approximately fair rule for this setting, we introduce the maximum payment rule (<span><math><mi>MP</mi></math></span>). Under this rule, each voter controls a part of the budget and, in each step, the corresponding voters allocate their entire budget to the candidate approved by the largest number of voters with non-zero budget. We show that <span><math><mi>MP</mi></math></span> meets our criteria as it satisfies monotonicity and a demanding population consistency condition and gives a 2-approximation to a fairness notion called average fair share (AFS). Moreover, we generalize <span><math><mi>MP</mi></math></span> to the class of sequential payment rules and prove that it is the most desirable rule within this class: nearly all other sequential payment rules fail monotonicity while offering only small improvements in the approximation ratio to AFS.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48291,"journal":{"name":"Games and Economic Behavior","volume":"154 ","pages":"Pages 208-225"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2025-09-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145159409","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-09-12DOI: 10.1016/j.geb.2025.08.015
Elwyn Davies , Marcel Fafchamps
We conduct an interactive online experiment framed as an employment contract. Subjects from the US, India, and Africa are matched within and across countries. Employers make a one-period offer to a worker who can either decline or choose a high or low effort. The offer is restricted to be from a variable set of possible contracts. High effort is always efficient. Some observed choices are well predicted by self-interest, but others are better explained by conditional reciprocity or intrinsic motivation. Subjects from India and Africa follow intrinsic motivation and provide high effort more often. US subjects are more likely to follow self-interest and reach a less efficient outcome on average, but workers earn slightly more. We find no evidence of stereotypes across countries. Individual characteristics and stated attitudes toward worker incentives do not predict the behavioral differences observed between countries, consistent with cultural differences in the response to labor incentives.
{"title":"Material incentives and effort choice: Evidence from an online experiment across countries","authors":"Elwyn Davies , Marcel Fafchamps","doi":"10.1016/j.geb.2025.08.015","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.geb.2025.08.015","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>We conduct an interactive online experiment framed as an employment contract. Subjects from the US, India, and Africa are matched within and across countries. Employers make a one-period offer to a worker who can either decline or choose a high or low effort. The offer is restricted to be from a variable set of possible contracts. High effort is always efficient. Some observed choices are well predicted by self-interest, but others are better explained by conditional reciprocity or intrinsic motivation. Subjects from India and Africa follow intrinsic motivation and provide high effort more often. US subjects are more likely to follow self-interest and reach a less efficient outcome on average, but workers earn slightly more. We find no evidence of stereotypes across countries. Individual characteristics and stated attitudes toward worker incentives do not predict the behavioral differences observed between countries, consistent with cultural differences in the response to labor incentives.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48291,"journal":{"name":"Games and Economic Behavior","volume":"154 ","pages":"Pages 175-199"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2025-09-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145097109","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-09-11DOI: 10.1016/j.geb.2025.08.016
Paul H.Y. Cheung , Keaton Ellis
Recent evidence suggests that non-isolation behavior could significantly impact laboratory experiments using the random problem selection (RPS) payment mechanism through lottery integration. Theoretical work also highlights social preferences that can violate statewise monotonicity, a necessary and sufficient condition for incentive compatibility with the RPS payment mechanism in case of lottery integration. Additionally, non-isolation can influence decisions through non-consequential dynamic concerns. In a series of three simple and parsimonious experiments and three tests, we examine the occurrence of the two kinds of non-isolation and reversal behaviors. We find significant evidence for positive reversal behavior, where subjects are more likely to make a fair choice if there is an alternative possible realization of an unfair outcome (which they chose themselves). In addition, the lower bounds for the prevalence of non-isolation in terms of lottery integration and dynamic non-consequential concern are estimated to be approximately 10% and 20%, respectively.
{"title":"Non-isolation, reversals, and social preference","authors":"Paul H.Y. Cheung , Keaton Ellis","doi":"10.1016/j.geb.2025.08.016","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.geb.2025.08.016","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Recent evidence suggests that non-isolation behavior could significantly impact laboratory experiments using the random problem selection (RPS) payment mechanism through <em>lottery integration</em>. Theoretical work also highlights social preferences that can violate statewise monotonicity, a necessary and sufficient condition for incentive compatibility with the RPS payment mechanism in case of lottery integration. Additionally, non-isolation can influence decisions through non-consequential dynamic concerns. In a series of three simple and parsimonious experiments and three tests, we examine the occurrence of the two kinds of non-isolation and reversal behaviors. We find significant evidence for <em>positive reversal</em> behavior, where subjects are more likely to make a fair choice if there is an alternative possible realization of an unfair outcome (which they chose themselves). In addition, the lower bounds for the prevalence of non-isolation in terms of lottery integration and dynamic non-consequential concern are estimated to be approximately 10% and 20%, respectively.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48291,"journal":{"name":"Games and Economic Behavior","volume":"154 ","pages":"Pages 159-174"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2025-09-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145097108","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-09-10DOI: 10.1016/j.geb.2025.08.017
Xiaoyu Cheng
Consider a persuasion game where both the sender and receiver are ambiguity averse with maxmin expected utility (MEU) preferences and the sender can choose an ambiguous information structure. This paper analyzes the game in an ex-ante formulation: the sender first commits to an information structure, and then the receiver best responds by choosing an ex-ante message-contingent action plan. Under this formulation, I show it is never strictly beneficial for the sender to use an ambiguous information structure as opposed to a standard unambiguous one. This result is robust to (i) the players having heterogeneous beliefs over the states, and/or (ii) the receiver having non-MEU, uncertainty-averse preferences. However, it is not robust to the sender having non-MEU preferences.
{"title":"Ambiguous persuasion: An ex-ante formulation","authors":"Xiaoyu Cheng","doi":"10.1016/j.geb.2025.08.017","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.geb.2025.08.017","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Consider a persuasion game where both the sender and receiver are ambiguity averse with maxmin expected utility (MEU) preferences and the sender can choose an ambiguous information structure. This paper analyzes the game in an ex-ante formulation: the sender first commits to an information structure, and then the receiver best responds by choosing an ex-ante message-contingent action plan. Under this formulation, I show it is never strictly beneficial for the sender to use an ambiguous information structure as opposed to a standard unambiguous one. This result is robust to (i) the players having heterogeneous beliefs over the states, and/or (ii) the receiver having non-MEU, uncertainty-averse preferences. However, it is <em>not</em> robust to the sender having non-MEU preferences.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48291,"journal":{"name":"Games and Economic Behavior","volume":"154 ","pages":"Pages 149-158"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2025-09-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145061045","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-09-08DOI: 10.1016/j.geb.2025.08.014
Robert M. Anderson , Haosui Duanmu
Richter and Rubinstein (2020) developed a novel model for social norms, which play an essential role in governing individual behavior in many economic situations. We present a generalization of the Richter-Rubinstein model allowing for an infinite agent space, individualized sets of alternatives, externalities, and intransitive preferences. In addition, we study social welfare properties of feasible Pareto efficient profiles and illustrate the applicability of our results in examples including a centrally planned economy, the classical Walrasian exchange economy, and the formation of social norms.
{"title":"Equilibrium and social norms","authors":"Robert M. Anderson , Haosui Duanmu","doi":"10.1016/j.geb.2025.08.014","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.geb.2025.08.014","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div><span><span>Richter and Rubinstein (2020)</span></span> developed a novel model for social norms, which play an essential role in governing individual behavior in many economic situations. We present a generalization of the Richter-Rubinstein model allowing for an infinite agent space, individualized sets of alternatives, externalities, and intransitive preferences. In addition, we study social welfare properties of feasible Pareto efficient profiles and illustrate the applicability of our results in examples including a centrally planned economy, the classical Walrasian exchange economy, and the formation of social norms.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48291,"journal":{"name":"Games and Economic Behavior","volume":"154 ","pages":"Pages 119-128"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2025-09-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145049195","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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