nep-gth New Economics Papers
on Game Theory
Issue of 2018‒03‒26
28 papers chosen by
Sylvain Béal
Université de Franche-Comté

  1. Targetting interventions in networks By Galeotti, Andrea; Golub, Benjamin; Goyal, Sanjeev
  2. Potential games, path independence and Poisson's binomial distribution By Sen, Debapriya
  3. Compromise and Coordination: An Experimental Study By He, Simin; Wu, Jiabin
  4. Catch-Up: A Rule That Makes Service Sports More Competitive By Brams, Steven J.; Ismail, Mehmet S.; Kilgour, D. Marc; Stromquist, Walter
  5. Fall back proper equilibrium By Kleppe, John; Borm, Peter; Hendrickx, Ruud
  6. An Evolutionary Approach to International Environmental Agreements By Tiziano Distefano; Simone D'Alessandro
  7. Online Networks, Social Interaction and Segregation: An Evolutionary Approach By Angelo Antoci; Fabio Sabatini
  8. The probability to reach an agreement as a foundation for axiomatic bargaining By Lorenzo Bastianello; Marco LiCalzi
  9. Carpooling and the Economics of Self-Driving Cars By Michael Ostrovsky; Michael Schwarz
  10. The role of domain restrictions in mechanism design: ex post incentive compatibility and Pareto efficiency By Salvador Barberà; Dolors Berga; Bernardo Moreno
  11. Denial and Alarmism in Collective Action Problems By Manuel Foerster; Joel (J.J.) van der Weele
  12. Time Consistent Stopping For The Mean-Standard Deviation Problem --- The Discrete Time Case By Erhan Bayraktar; Jingjie Zhang; Zhou Zhou
  13. Dynkin games with Poisson random intervention times By Gechun Liang; Haodong Sun
  14. Strategic Profit–Sharing in a Unionized Differentiated Goods Duopoly By Emmanuel Petrakis; Panagiotis Skartados
  15. COOPERATIVE R&D AND COMMITMENT TO A POLICY OF KNOW-HOW TRADING By Mário Alexandre Patrício Martins da Silva
  16. Auctions with Limited Liability through Default or Resale By Marco Pagnozzi; Krista J. Saral
  17. Pricing Mechanism in Information Goods By Xinming Li; Huaqing Wang
  18. Persuading Perceval; Information Provision in a Sequential Search Setting By Mark Whitmeyer
  19. Crowdfunding with overenthusiastic investors : a global game model By Damien Besancenot; Radu Vranceanu
  20. Private Information and the Commitment Value of Unobservable Investment By Luigi Brighi; Marcello D'Amato
  21. Implementation by vote-buying mechanisms By Jon X. Eguia; Dimitrios Xefteris
  22. Proxy wars By Konyukhovskiy, Pavel V.; Grigoriadis, Theocharis
  23. Cognitive Skills and the Development of Strategic Sophistication By Fe, Eduardo; Gill, David
  24. Household Bargaining Power, Preferences for Children and Household Consumption By Andrea Moro; Federico Gutierrez
  25. Robust Comparative Statics for Non-monotone Shocks in Large Aggregative Games By Carmen Camacho; Takashi Kamihigashi; Çağrı Sağlam
  26. Social Interactions, Mechanisms, and Equilibrium: Evidence from a Model of Study Time and Academic Achievement By Tim Conley; Nirav Mehta; Ralph Stinebrickner; Todd Stinebrickner
  27. Output and R&D subsidies in a mixed oligopoly By Lee, Sang-Ho; Tomaru, Yoshihiro
  28. Sequential Search Auctions with a Deadline By JOOSUNG LEE; DANIEL Z. LI

  1. By: Galeotti, Andrea; Golub, Benjamin; Goyal, Sanjeev
    Abstract: Individuals interact strategically with their network neighbors. A planner can shape incentives in pursuit of an aggregate goal, such as maximizing welfare or minimizing volatility. We analyze a variety of targeting problems by identifying how a given profile of incentive changes is amplified or attenuated by the strategic spillovers in the network. The optimal policies are simplest when the budget for intervention is large. If actions are strategic complements, the optimal intervention changes all agents' incentives in the same direction and does so in proportion to their eigenvector centralities. In games of strategic substitutes, the optimal intervention is very different: it moves neighbors' incentives in opposite directions, dividing local communities into positively and negatively targeted agents, with few links across these two categories. To derive these results and characterize optimal interventions more generally, we introduce a method of decomposing any potential intervention into principal components determined by the network. A particular ordering of principal components describes the planner's priorities across a range of network intervention problems.
    Date: 2018–03–15
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:esx:essedp:21698&r=gth
  2. By: Sen, Debapriya
    Abstract: This paper provides a simple characterization of potential games in terms of path independence. Using this characterization we propose an algorithm to determine if a finite game is potential or not. We define the storage requirement for our algorithm and provide its upper bound. The number of equations required in this algorithm is lower or equal to the number obtained in the algorithms proposed in the recent literature. We also show that for games with same numbers of players and strategy profiles, the number of equations for our algorithm is maximum when all players have the same number of strategies. To obtain our results, the key technique of this paper is to identify an associated Poisson's binomial distribution. This distribution enables us to derive explicit forms of the number of equations, storage requirement and related aspects.
    Keywords: potential games; zero strategy; path independence; Poisson's binomial distribution; storage requirement
    JEL: C72
    Date: 2018–02–02
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:84409&r=gth
  3. By: He, Simin; Wu, Jiabin
    Abstract: This paper experimentally studies the role of a compromise option in a repeated battle-of-the-sexes game. We find that in a random-matching environment, compromise serves as an effective focal point and facilitates coordination, but fails to improve efficiency. However, in a fixed-partnership environment, compromise deters subjects from learning to play alternation, a more efficient but also more complex strategy. As a result, compromise hurts efficiency in the long-run by allowing subjects to coordinate on the less efficient outcome. We explore various behavioral mechanisms and suggest that people may fail to use an equal and efficient strategy if such a strategy is complex.
    Keywords: Compromise, Battle-of-the-Sexes, Repeated games, Behavioral game theory, Experimental economics.
    JEL: C72 C92
    Date: 2018
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:84713&r=gth
  4. By: Brams, Steven J.; Ismail, Mehmet S.; Kilgour, D. Marc; Stromquist, Walter
    Abstract: Service sports include two-player contests such as volleyball, badminton, and squash. We analyze four rules, including the Standard Rule (SR), in which a player continues to serve until he or she loses. The Catch-Up Rule (CR) gives the serve to the player who has lost the previous point—as opposed to the player who won the previous point, as under SR. We also consider two Trailing Rules that make the server the player who trails in total score. Surprisingly, compared with SR, only CR gives the players the same probability of winning a game while increasing its expected length, thereby making it more competitive and exciting to watch. Unlike one of the Trailing Rules, CR is strategy-proof. By contrast, the rules of tennis fix who serves and when; its tiebreaker, however, keeps play competitive by being fair—not favoring either the player who serves first or who serves second.
    Keywords: Sports rules; service sports; Markov processes; competitiveness; fairness; strategy-proofness
    JEL: C7 C72 D6 D63 L83
    Date: 2016–12–19
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:75650&r=gth
  5. By: Kleppe, John (Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management); Borm, Peter (Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management); Hendrickx, Ruud (Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management)
    Abstract: Proper equilibrium plays a prominent role in the literature on non-cooperative games. The underlying thought experiment in which the players play a passive role is, however, unsatisfying, as it gives no justification for its fundamental idea that severe mistakes are made with a significantly smaller probability than innocuous ones. In this paper, we introduce a more active role for the players, leading to the refinement of fall back proper equilibrium.
    Date: 2017
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tiu:tiutis:50d88189-def5-4187-91bb-9113695aa9b6&r=gth
  6. By: Tiziano Distefano (Department of Environmental, Land and Infrastructure Engineering, Politecnico di Torino, Italy); Simone D'Alessandro (University of Pisa, Department of Economics and Management, Italy)
    Abstract: Our work contributes to explain the origin of the failure or success of international environmental agreements (IEA) and their relation with the actual aggregate global level of greenhouse gas emissions, by including climate risks, cross-country inequalities, and consumer's environmental awareness. We introduce a novel multi-scale framework, composed by two tied games, to show under which conditions a country is able to fulfil the IEA: (i) a one-shot 2x2 Game, with asymmetric countries that negotiate on the maximum share of emissions, and (ii) an Evolutionary Game which describes the economic structure through the interaction of households and rms' strategies.
    Keywords: International environmental agreements, asymmetry, evolutionary process, Multi-level perspective, climate change
    JEL: C71 C72 C73 H41 F53 Q20
    Date: 2018–03
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:srt:wpaper:0418&r=gth
  7. By: Angelo Antoci; Fabio Sabatini
    Abstract: There is growing evidence that face-to-face interaction is declining in many countries, exacerbating the phenomenon of social isolation. On the other hand, social interaction through online networking sites is steeply rising. To analyze these societal dynamics, we have built an evolutionary game model in which agents can choose between three strategies of social participation: 1) interaction via both online social networks and face-to-face encounters; 2) interaction by exclusive means of face-to-face encounters; 3) opting out from both forms of participation in pursuit of social isolation. We illustrate the dynamics of interaction among these three types of agent that the model predicts, in light of the empirical evidence provided by previous literature. We then assess their welfare implications. We show that when online interaction is less gratifying than offline encounters, the dynamics of agents’ rational choices of interaction will lead to the extinction of the sub-population of online networks users, thereby making Facebook and similar platforms disappear in the long run. Furthermore, we show that the higher the propensity for discrimination of those who interact via online social networks and via face-to-face encounters (i.e., their preference for the interaction with agents of their same type), the greater the probability will be that they all will end up choosing social isolation in the long run, making society fall into a “social poverty trap”.
    Keywords: Social networks; segregation; dynamics of social interaction; social media, social networking sites.
    JEL: C73 D85 O33 Z13
    Date: 2018–03–01
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:eei:rpaper:eeri_rp_2018_01&r=gth
  8. By: Lorenzo Bastianello (LEMMA Universite Paris 2 Pantheon-Assas); Marco LiCalzi (Dept. of Management, Università Ca' Foscari Venice)
    Abstract: We revisit the Nash bargaining model and axiomatize a procedural solution that maximizes the probability of successful bargaining. This probability-based approach nests both the standard and the ordinal Nash solution, and yet need not assume that bargainers have preferences over lotteries or that choice sets are convex. We consider both mediator-assisted bargaining and standard unassisted bargaining. We solve a long-standing puzzle and offer a natural interpretation of the product operator underlying the Nash solution. We characterize other known solution concepts, including the egalitarian and the utilitarian solutions.
    Keywords: cooperative bargaining, mediation, arbitration, benchmarking, copulas.
    JEL: C78 D81 D74
    Date: 2018–03
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:vnm:wpdman:150&r=gth
  9. By: Michael Ostrovsky; Michael Schwarz
    Abstract: We study the interplay between autonomous transportation, carpooling, and road pricing. We discuss how improvements in these technologies, and interactions among them, will affect transportation markets. Our main results show how to achieve socially efficient outcomes in such markets, taking into account the costs of driving, road capacity, and commuter preferences. An important component of the efficient outcome is the socially optimal matching of carpooling riders. Our approach shows how to set road prices and how to share the costs of driving and tolls among carpooling riders in a way that implements the efficient outcome.
    JEL: C78 L91
    Date: 2018–02
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:24349&r=gth
  10. By: Salvador Barberà; Dolors Berga; Bernardo Moreno
    Abstract: Abstract: The possibility of designing efficient, ex-post incentive compatible, single valued direct mechanisms crucially depends on the domain of types and preferences on which they are defined. In a general framework that allows for interdependent types, we identify two relevant classes of domains. For the class of those that we call knit, we show that only the constant mechanisms can be ex post (or even interim) incentive compatible. We then propose a concept of ex post group incentive compatibility that implies Pareto efficiency on the range of mechanisms, and show that this strong condition will be implied by standard ex post incentive compatibility in our second class of domains, that we call partially knit. That opens the door to identify environments in which good incentives are not at odds with efficiency. In the particular case of private values, our results provide conditions under which individual and strong group strategy-proofness become equivalent. We provide examples of voting, matching, and auction mechanisms to which our theorems apply.
    Keywords: mechanisms, ex post incentive compatibility, ex post group incentive compatibility, strategy-proofness, strong group strategy-proofness, knit domains, respectfulness
    JEL: C78 D71 D78
    Date: 2018–03
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bge:wpaper:1024&r=gth
  11. By: Manuel Foerster (University of Hamburg); Joel (J.J.) van der Weele (Universiteit van Amsterdam)
    Abstract: We analyze communication about the social returns to investment in a public good. We model two agents who have private information about these returns as well as their own taste for cooperation, or social preferences. Before deciding to contribute or not, each agent submits an unverifiable report about the returns to the other agent. We show that even if the public good benefits both agents, there are incentives to misrepresent information. First, others’ willingness to cooperate generates an incentive for “alarmism”, the exaggeration of social returns in order to opportunistically induce more investment. Second, if people also want to be perceived as cooperators, a “justification motive” arises for low contributors. As a result, equilibrium communication features “denial” about the returns, depressing contributions. We illustrate the model in the context of institutional inertia and the climate change debate.
    Keywords: cheap talk; cooperation; image concerns; information aggregation; public goods
    JEL: C72 D64 D82 D83 D91
    Date: 2018–03–07
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tin:wpaper:20180019&r=gth
  12. By: Erhan Bayraktar; Jingjie Zhang; Zhou Zhou
    Abstract: Inspired by Strotz's consistent planning strategy, we formulate the infinite horizon mean-variance stopping problem as a subgame perfect Nash equilibrium in order to determine time consistent strategies with no regret. Equilibria among stopping times or randomized stopping times may not exist. This motivates us to consider the notion of liquidation strategies, which lets the stopping right to be divisible. We then argue that the mean-standard deviation variant of this problem makes more sense for this type of strategies in terms of time consistency. It turns out that an equilibrium liquidation strategy always exists. We then analyze whether optimal equilibrium liquidation strategies exist and whether they are unique and observe that neither may hold.
    Date: 2018–02
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:1802.08358&r=gth
  13. By: Gechun Liang; Haodong Sun
    Abstract: This paper introduces a new class of Dynkin games, where the two players are allowed to make their stopping decisions at a sequence of exogenous Poisson arrival times. The value function and the associated optimal stopping strategy are characterized by the solution of a backward stochastic differential equation. The paper further applies the model to study the optimal conversion and calling strategies of convertible bonds, and their asymptotics when the Poisson intensity goes to infinity.
    Date: 2018–03
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:1803.00329&r=gth
  14. By: Emmanuel Petrakis (Department of Economics, University of Crete, Greece); Panagiotis Skartados
    Keywords: unionized oligopoly, bargaining, profit-sharing scheme
    JEL: J23 J33 J41
    Date: 2018–03–20
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:crt:wpaper:1801&r=gth
  15. By: Mário Alexandre Patrício Martins da Silva (Faculdade de Economia da Universidade do Porto)
    Abstract: In this paper, the commitment to a policy of know-how trading by the participants in an industry is explained by the firms’ attempt to induce the equilibrium of a single industry-wide cooperative research joint venture. In a repeated game framework, we show that pre-commitments by non-cooperative firms to disclose their own know-how to the industry can be effective in inducing cooperative R&D investments by the participants.
    Keywords: Cooperative R&D, Know-how trading, Policy
    JEL: L13 O31 O33
    Date: 2018–01
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:por:fepwps:601&r=gth
  16. By: Marco Pagnozzi (Università di Napoli Federico II and CSEF); Krista J. Saral (Webster University Geneva and CNRS, GATE Lyon St Etienne)
    Abstract: If bidders are uncertain about their value when they participate in an auction, they may overbid and suffer ex-post losses. Limited liability mitigates these losses, and may result in more aggressive bidding and higher seller revenue, but also in an inefficient allocation. Using a combination of theory and experiment, we analyze three different forms of liability in second-price auctions: full liability, limited liability by default with varying penalties, and resale-based limited liability. With a default penalty, bids are higher than under full liability, but final revenue and efficiency are lower due to the frequency of default. Auctions with resale result in the highest revenue and allocative efficiency, and are as effective as a low default penalty in alleviating bidders’ losses. Hence, allowing resale as a form of limited liability may be preferred by both bidders and sellers over other liability rules.
    Keywords: Auctions, Limited Liability, Default, Resale, Experimental Economics
    JEL: D44 C90
    Date: 2018–03–10
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:sef:csefwp:494&r=gth
  17. By: Xinming Li; Huaqing Wang
    Abstract: We study three pricing mechanisms' performance and their effects on the participants in the data industry from the data supply chain perspective. A win-win pricing strategy for the players in the data supply chain is proposed. We obtain analytical solutions in each pricing mechanism, including the decentralized and centralized pricing, Nash Bargaining pricing, and revenue sharing mechanism.
    Date: 2018–03
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:1803.01530&r=gth
  18. By: Mark Whitmeyer
    Abstract: This paper modifies the classic Weitzman search problem by granting the items (boxes) to be searched agency. In this zero-sum game, each box commits to a signal structure in order to maximize the chance that it is selected by the searcher at the completion of his search. There is a common, symmetric binary prior on the distribution of prizes within the boxes. If there are no search frictions, then the problem reduces to the one examined in Hulko and Whitmeyer (2017). On the other hand, with search frictions, if the expected value of the prize is sufficiently high, there is a symmetric equilibrium in pure strategies; but if it is too low, then there is no such pure strategy equilibrium. Remarkably, it is always beneficial to the searcher to have a slight search cost. This is in sharp contrast to the famous Diamond paradox. Instead, in this model, a small search cost leads to the Perfect Competition level of information provision
    Date: 2018–02
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:1802.09396&r=gth
  19. By: Damien Besancenot (LIRAES - EA 4470 - Laboratoire Interdisciplinaire de Recherche Appliquée en Economie de la Santé - UPD5 - Université Paris Descartes - Paris 5); Radu Vranceanu (Essec Business School)
    Abstract: Crowdfunding platforms are providing funds to an increasing number of projects, among which many have a strong social/community impact. Under a all-or-nothing program, the success of the investment depends on the ability of a crowd of potential investors to put their funds into the project without an explicit coordination device. With heterogeneous information, such a problem can be analyzed as a typical global game. We assume that signals of at least some agents present a systematic positive bias, driven by positive emotions about projects with high social/community impact. The analysis reveals that if the number of such overenthusiastic persons is large enough, crowdfunding finance might support financially inefficient projects. We then analyze how a monopolistic platform optimally determines transaction fees and unveil the relationship between overenthusiasm and the profit of the platform.
    Keywords: Crowdfunding,Entrepreneurship,Global games,Overenthusiasm,Behavioral IO
    Date: 2018–02–22
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:wpaper:hal-01718793&r=gth
  20. By: Luigi Brighi; Marcello D'Amato
    Abstract: The commitment value of unobservable investment with cost-reducing effects is examined in an entry model where the incumbent is privately informed about his costs of production. We show that when the price signals incumbent’s costs, unobservable investment can not have any commitment value and the limit price does not limit entry. By contrast, if the price does not reveal costs, which is the more likely outcome, unobservable investment has a magnified value of commitment and a less aggressive limit price deters profitable entry.
    Keywords: Commitment, entry deterrence, limit pricing, signaling
    JEL: D24 D82 L12 L41
    Date: 2018–02
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:mod:recent:135&r=gth
  21. By: Jon X. Eguia; Dimitrios Xefteris
    Abstract: A vote-buying mechanism is such that each agent buys a quantity of votes x to cast for an alternative of her choosing, at a cost c(x), and the outcome is determined by the total number of votes cast for each alternative. In the context of binary decisions, we prove that the choice rules that can be implemented by vote-buying mechanisms in large societies are parameterized by a positive parameter rho, which measures the importance of individual preference intensities on the social choice: The limit with rho= 0 is majority rule, rho = 1 is utilitarianism, and rho?8 is the Rawlsian maximin rule. We show that any vote-buying mechanism with limit cost elasticity (1 rho)/rho as x?0 implements the choice rule defined by rho. The utilitarian efficiency of quadratic voting (Lalley and Weyl, 2016) follows as a special case.
    Keywords: implementation; mechanism design; vote-buying; social welfare; utilitarianism; quadratic voting
    JEL: D72 D71 D61
    Date: 2018–03
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ucy:cypeua:04-2018&r=gth
  22. By: Konyukhovskiy, Pavel V.; Grigoriadis, Theocharis
    Abstract: Proxy wars are a key pattern of political conflict and interstate competition. Rather than resorting to direct conflicts, which are costly and entail a higher level of uncertainty, governments may opt for proxy wars, which may last longer, but are less costly and render them more immune to exogenous shocks. We start with the modeling of a direct war with two players where a static equilibrium may be neither realizable nor sustainable in the long run. Then, we offer a model of proxy war where the proposed equilibria are realizable, but not always sustainable in the long run. The consolidation level of the double principal-agent relationship predicts the continuation of conflict and thus the emergence of peace.
    Keywords: non-cooperative games,principal-agent models,proxy conflicts
    JEL: C72 D72 D74 P51
    Date: 2018
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:fubsbe:20184&r=gth
  23. By: Fe, Eduardo (University of Strathclyde); Gill, David (Purdue University)
    Abstract: In this paper we investigate how observable cognitive skills influence the development of strategic sophistication. To answer this question, we study experimentally how psychometric measures of theory-of-mind and cognitive ability (or 'fluid intelligence') work together with age to determine the strategic ability and level-k behavior of children in a variety of incentivized strategic interactions. We find that better theory-of-mind and cognitive ability predict strategic sophistication in competitive games. Furthermore, age and cognitive ability act in tandem as complements, while age and theory-of-mind operate independently. Older children respond to information about the cognitive ability of their opponent, which provides support for the emergence of a sophisticated strategic theory-of-mind. Finally, theory-of-mind and age strongly predict whether children respond to intentions in a gift-exchange game, while cognitive ability has no influence, suggesting that different psychometric measures of cognitive skill correspond to different cognitive processes in strategic situations that involve the understanding of intentions.
    Keywords: cognitive skills, theory-of-mind, cognitive ability, fluid intelligence, strategic sophistication, age, children, experiment, level-k, bounded rationality, non-equilibrium thinking, intentions, gift-exchange game, competitive game, strategic game, strategic interaction
    JEL: C91 D91 J24
    Date: 2018–02
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp11326&r=gth
  24. By: Andrea Moro (Vanderbilt University); Federico Gutierrez (Vanderbilt University)
    Abstract: We structurally estimate the parameters of a collective model of household consumption that includes preferences for children using the Mexican Family Life Survey. The estimation sheds lights on parents' relative bargaining power, their different preferences for children's consumption, and the consumption of children of different gender. We use the model to assess how parent's relative bargaining power, altruism, and gender preferences affect the distributional and welfare implications of targeting conditional cash transfers to women.
    Date: 2017
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:red:sed017:1426&r=gth
  25. By: Carmen Camacho (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), France and Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, France); Takashi Kamihigashi (Research Institute for Economics and Business Administration (RIEB), Kobe University, Japan); Çağrı Sağlam (Department of Economics, Bilkent University, Turkey)
    Abstract: A policy change that involves a redistribution of income or wealth is typically controversial, affecting some people positively but others negatively. In this paper we extend the "robust comparative statics" result for large aggregative games established by Acemoglu and Jensen (2010, 49th IEEE Conference on Decision and Control, 3133-3139) to possibly controversial policy changes. In particular, we show that both the smallest and the largest equilibrium values of an aggregate variable increase in response to a policy change to which individuals' reactions may be mixed but the overall aggregate response is positive. We provide sufficient conditions for such a policy change in terms of distributional changes in parameters.
    Keywords: Large aggregative games, Robust comparative statics, Positive shocks, Stochastic dominance, Mean-preserving spreads
    Date: 2017–12
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:kob:dpaper:dp2017-34&r=gth
  26. By: Tim Conley; Nirav Mehta; Ralph Stinebrickner; Todd Stinebrickner
    Abstract: We develop and estimate a model of student study time on a social network. The model is designed to exploit unique data collected in the Berea Panel Study. Study time data allow us to quantify an intuitive mechanism for academic social interactions: own study time may depend on friend study time in a heterogeneous manner. Social network data allow us to embed study time and resulting academic achievement in an estimable equilibrium framework. We develop a specification test that exploits the equilibrium nature of social interactions and use it to show that novel study propensity measures mitigate econometric endogeneity concerns.
    Keywords: social networks, peer effects, homophily, time-use
    JEL: C52 C54 I20
    Date: 2018
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_6896&r=gth
  27. By: Lee, Sang-Ho; Tomaru, Yoshihiro
    Abstract: We analyze an oligopoly where public and private firms compete in quantity and R&D. Using general functions, we show that an output subsidy and an R&D tax can achieve the first-best allocation. Moreover, the degree of privatization does not influence the optimal output subsidy but does influence the optimal R&D tax.
    Keywords: R&D subsidy; Output subsidy; Mixed oligopoly; Partial privatization
    JEL: H2 L3
    Date: 2017–03–01
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:84410&r=gth
  28. By: JOOSUNG LEE (University of Edinburgh); DANIEL Z. LI (Durham Business School)
    Abstract: seller wants to allocate an indivisible product among a number of potential buyers by a finite deadline, and to contact a buyer, she needs to pay a positive search cost. We investigate the optimal mechanism for this problem, and show that its outcomes can be implemented by a sequence of second-price auctions. The optimal sequential search auction is characterized by declining reserve prices and increasing search intensities (sample sizes) over time, and the monotonicity results are robust in both cases of short-lived and long-lived bidders. When bidders are long-lived the optimal reserve prices demonstrate a one-step-ahead property, and our results generalize the well-known results in sequential search problems (Weitzman, 1979). We further examine an efficient search mechanism, and show that it is featured by both lower reserve prices and search intensities than an optimal search mechanism.
    Keywords: sequential search, search mechanism, auction, deadline, sample size, reserve prices
    JEL: D44 D82 D83
    Date: 2018–03
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:dur:durham:2018_03&r=gth

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