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on Game Theory |
| By: | Tasos Kalandrakis (W. Allen Wallis Institute of Political Economy, 107 Harkness Hall, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY 14627-0158) |
| Abstract: | We analyze a class of two-candidate voter participation games under complete information that encompasses as special cases certain public good provision games. We characterize the Nash equilibria of these games as stationary points of a non-linear programming problem, the objective function of which is a Morse function (one that does not admit degenerate critical points) for almost all costs of participation. We use this fact to establish that, outside a closed set of measure zero of participation costs, all equilibria of these games are regular (an alternative to the result of De Sinopoli and Iannantuoni, 2005). One consequence of regularity is that the equilibria of these games are robust to the introduction of (mild) incomplete information. Finally, we establish the existence of monotone Nash equilibria, such that players with higher participation cost abstain with (weakly) higher probability. |
| Keywords: | Turnout, Public Goods, Regular Equilibrium, Monotone Equilibrium. |
| JEL: | C72 D72 |
| Date: | 2005–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:roc:wallis:wp40&r=gth |
| By: | Andrew Cohen |
| Abstract: | This note presents a simple algorithm for characterizing the set of pure strategy Nash equilibria in a broad class of entry games. The algorithm alleviates much of the computational burden associated with recently developed econometric techniques for estimating payoff functions inferred from entry games with multiple equlibria. |
| Date: | 2004 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fedgfe:2005-37&r=gth |
| By: | Jakub Steiner |
| Abstract: | We build a dynamic global game in which players repeatedly face a similar coordination problem. By choosing a risky action (invest) instead of an outside option (not invest), players risk instantaneous losses as well as payoffs from future stages, in which they cannot participate if they go bankrupt. Thus, the total strategic risk associated with investment in a particular stage depends on the expected continuation payoff. High expected future payoffs make investment today more risky and therefore harder to coordinate on, which decreases today’s payoff. Expectation of successful coordination tomorrow undermines successful coordination today which leads to fluctuations of equilibrium behavior even if the underlying economic fundamentals happen to be stationary. The dynamic game inherits the equilibrium uniqueness of static global games. |
| Keywords: | Coordination, crises, cycles and fluctuations, equilibrium Uniqueness, global games. |
| JEL: | C72 C73 D8 E32 |
| Date: | 2005–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cer:papers:wp274&r=gth |
| By: | Carlos Alós-Ferrer; Klaus Ritzberger |
| Abstract: | This paper addresses the question of what it takes to obtain a well-de?ned extensive form game. Without relying on simplifying ?niteness or discreteness assumptions, we characterize the class of game trees for which (a) extensive forms can be de?ned and (b) all pure strategy combinations induce unique outcomes. The generality of the set-up covers “exotic” cases, like stochastic games or decision problems in continuous time (di?erential games). We ?nd that the latter class ful?lls the ?rst, but not the second requirement. |
| JEL: | C72 D70 |
| Date: | 2005–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:vie:viennp:0506&r=gth |
| By: | Christiane Pawlowitsch |
| Abstract: | In an evolutionary sender–receiver game that describes how signals become associated with objects (Hurford, 1989; Nowak and Krakauer, 1999), the set of evolutionarily stable states coincides with the set of strict Nash strategies—and a language is a strict Nash strategy if and only if it links each possible referent exclusively to 1 signal and vice versa (Trapa and Nowak, 2000). As a consequence, a language that displays homonymy (or synonymy)—the property that one signal is linked to more than one referent (or one referent to more than one signal)—cannot be an evolutionarily stable state. This seems to conflict with the results of the computer simulation reported in Nowak and Krakauer (1999) that lend support to the conjecture that a language in which the same signal is used for more than one object can be evolutionarily stable. This paper provides necessary and sucient conditions for a neutrally stable state of this game—and, importantly, these conditions directly characterize a single strategy—showing that a language displaying homonymy or synonymy, even though it fails to be evolutionarily stable (in the strict sense), may still satisfy neutral stability, explaining why an evolutionary process does not necessarily lead away from it. |
| JEL: | C72 |
| Date: | 2005–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:vie:viennp:0509&r=gth |