Games and Economic Behavior最新文献

We consider non-cooperative bargaining over a fixed surplus between two groups that may differ in size and the supermajority threshold they employ for within-group ratification. We find that total allocation to a group does not depend on group size and increases with the supermajority threshold. We use the Gini coefficient to study within-group inequality as an outcome of interest and find that inequality increases with group size and decreases with the supermajority threshold. Finally, we study delegation by concentrating the ability to influence proposals within a subset of group members. Delegation to a subgroup decreases the group's total allocation because non-delegates accept lower allocations. Inequality is higher if delegation is employed, and it is decreasing in the size of the delegate committee.

The presence of observation errors limits players' ability to detect deviations, and hence the possibility of efficient cooperation in repeated games. When players interact repeatedly in multiple games with imperfect observation in at least one game, however, we find a novel spillover effect that enhances players' ability to sustain cooperation. This finding suggests the presence of observation error can increase the likelihood of efficient cooperation when players interact in multiple repeated games simultaneously. Our result has important implications for industrial organizations, relational contracts, and international cooperation.

This paper studies the welfare effects of school district consolidation. Using incomplete rank-ordered lists (ROLs) submitted for admission to the Hungarian secondary school system, we estimate complete ROLs assuming that parents do not use dominated strategies and that the matching outcome is stable. These estimates aid in constructing a counterfactual district-based assignment and discerning the factors driving parents' preferences over schools. We find that district consolidation leads to large welfare gains in Budapest, equivalent to students attending a school five kilometres closer to their residences. These gains offset the additional travel distances incurred in the consolidated assignment. 73% of matched students benefit from district consolidation, while fewer than 3% are assigned to a less preferred school. Students from smaller and less under-demanded districts benefit relatively more, as well as those with high academic ability. Using reported preferences instead of estimated ones also yields large gains from district consolidation.

In this paper, we introduce a two-stage Bayesian persuasion model in which a third-party platform controls the information available to the sender about users' preferences. We aim to characterize the optimal information disclosure policy of the platform, which maximizes average user utility, under the assumption that the sender also follows its own optimal policy. We show that this problem can be reduced to a model of market segmentation, in which probabilities are mapped into valuations. We then introduce a repeated variation of the persuasion platform problem in which myopic users arrive sequentially. In this setting, the platform controls the sender's information about users and maintains a reputation for the sender, punishing it if it fails to act truthfully on a certain subset of signals. We provide a characterization of the optimal platform policy in the reputation-based setting, which is then used to simplify the optimization problem of the platform.

Social dilemmas often impose negative externalities on third parties. We experimentally analyze gender differences in cooperation in such a setting, i.e., a prisoner's dilemma game, with a passive third party that may be harmed when active players mutually cooperate. Applying a within-subjects setting, we compare cooperation under anonymity and social information, as personal characteristics are commonly known in real-life relations. Results show that the presence of a negative externality particularly affects guilt-averse women, who cooperate less often independently of the degree of information they receive. No gender difference is found absent negative externalities.

The Shapley value equals a player's contribution to the potential of a game. The potential is a most natural one-number summary of a game, which can be computed as the expected accumulated worth of a random partition of the players. This computation integrates the coalition formation of all players and readily extends to games with externalities. We investigate those potential functions for games with externalities that can be computed this way. It turns out that the potential that corresponds to the MPW solution introduced by Macho-Stadler et al. (2007, J. Econ. Theory 135, 339–356) is unique in the following sense. It is obtained as the expected accumulated worth of a random partition, it generalizes the potential for games without externalities, and it induces a solution that satisfies the null player property even in the presence of externalities.

A recurring theme in the study of society is the concentration of influence and power that is driven through unequal membership of groups and associations. In some instances, these bodies constitute a small world while in others they are fragmented into distinct cliques. This paper presents a new model of clubs and networks to understand the sources of individual marginalization and the origins of small and large worlds.

This study addresses the emergence of (unarmed) peace and investments in arms within a guns-vs-butter conflict setting. We introduce a novel feature within the conflict game and separate the decision to start a conflict and the investment in arms, following the theoretical framework of Garfinkel and Syropoulos (2021). Based on this model we experimentally examine the emergence of peace while varying resource inequality among conflicting parties. We find that inequality leads to more conflicts and higher investments in arms. Despite these trends, achieving a state of unarmed peace is rarely observed in both treatments. Our results highlight the critical role of trust in attaining peaceful outcomes and show that armed peace, although not an optimal strategy in either treatment, is one of the most frequently chosen decisions.