|
on Game Theory |
| By: | Ratul Lahkar (Ashoka University); Sayan Mukherjee (ISI Kolkata); Souvik Roy (ISI, Kolkata) |
| Abstract: | We consider the logit dynamic in a large population game with a continuum of strategies. The deterministic approximation approach requires us to derive this dynamic as the finite horizon limit of a stochastic process in a game with a finite but large number of strategies and players. We first establish the closeness of this dynamic with a step–wise approximation. We then show that the logit stochastic process is close to the step–wise logit dynamic in a discrete approximation of the original game. Combining the two results, we obtain our deterministic approximation result. We apply the result to large population supermodular games with a continuum of strategies. Over finite but sufficiently long time horizons, the logit stochastic process converges to logit equilibria in a discrete approximation of the supermodular game. By the deterministic approximation approach, so does the logit dynamic in the continuum supermodular game |
| Date: | 2022–04–26 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ash:wpaper:79&r= |
| By: | Chen, Xuyang (Université catholique de Louvain, LIDAM/CORE, Belgium); Hindriks, Jean (Université catholique de Louvain, LIDAM/CORE, Belgium) |
| Abstract: | Market asymmetry between large and small countries induces tax gap that triggers profit shifting and base erosion from multinationals. Tax enforcement is the alternative to tax coordination to limit profit shifting. However, the lack of enforcement coordination makes the fight against profit shifting less effective. We consider a game in which countries differ both in (market) size and enforcement productivity (enforcement elasticity of tax revenue). Countries seek to maximize welfare (tax revenue net of enforcement cost), choosing first their enforcement level to limit profit shifting before competing in taxes. We find that enforcement leadership Pareto dominates simultaneous enforcement choices, and that the low-enforcement productivity country would be the leader. In line with the OECD/G20 BEPS project, we analyze the scope for international enforcement cooperation. We establish that Nash bargaining over enforcements (with countries competing in taxes) induces higher enforcement, tax and revenue for each country, and that the benefit of enforcement cooperation is larger for the low-enforcement productivity country. We then analyze the minimum tax reform showing that it achieves a Pareto improvement both under cooperative and non-cooperative enforcement. |
| Keywords: | Leadership, Tax enforcement, Profit shifting, Minimum tax |
| JEL: | H30 H87 C72 |
| Date: | 2021–09–29 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cor:louvco:2021013&r= |
| By: | Khan, Abhimanyu |
| Abstract: | I develop a notion of evolutionary stability of behavioural rules when individuals simultaneously interact in a family of strategic games. An individual’s strategy choice is determined by his behavioural rule which may take into account the manner in which the games have been played in the past. The payoffs obtained by individuals following a particular behavioural rule determine that rule’s fitness. A population is stable if, whenever some individuals from an incumbent behavioural rule mutate and follow a mutant behavioural rule, the fitness of each incumbent behavioural rule exceeds that of the mutant behavioural rule. The behavioural rules approach thus conceptualises stability when individuals simultaneously interact in a variety of strategic environments. I first show the lack of stability whenever individuals exhibit heterogeneity in their behavioural rules. Furthermore, when all individuals follow the same behavioural rule, I find that the behavioural rules approach to stability is a refinement of the evolutionary stability of strategies approach in that the necessary condition for stability of behavioural rules is stronger than the corresponding condition for evolutionary stability of strategies. Finally, I present a sufficient condition for stability that is reasonably close to the necessary condition alluded to above. |
| Keywords: | behavioural rules, evolutionary stability, stability, evolutionary stable strategies |
| JEL: | C73 |
| Date: | 2021–12–30 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:112920&r= |
| By: | Yann Bramoullé (AMSE - Aix-Marseille Sciences Economiques - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - ECM - École Centrale de Marseille - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - AMU - Aix Marseille Université); Christian Ghiglino (Essex Pathways, University of Essex - University of Essex) |
| Abstract: | We introduce loss aversion into a model of conspicuous consumption in networks. Agents allocate their income between a standard good and a status good to maximize a Cobb-Douglas utility. Agents interact over a connected network and compare their status consumption to their neighbors' average consumption. Loss aversion has a profound impact. If loss aversion is large enough relative to income heterogeneity, a continuum of Nash equilibria appears and all agents consume the same quantity of status good. Otherwise, there is a unique Nash equilibrium and richest agents earn strict status gains while poorest agents earn strict status losses. |
| Keywords: | Loss Aversion,Conspicuous Consumption,Social Networks |
| Date: | 2022–04–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:wpaper:hal-03630455&r= |
| By: | Ehud Lehrer; Dimitry Shaiderman |
| Abstract: | In the classical Bayesian persuasion model an informed player and an uninformed one engage in a static interaction. The informed player, the sender, knows the state of nature, while the uninformed one, the receiver, does not. The informed player partially shares his private information with the receiver and the latter then, based on her belief about the state, takes an action. This action, together with the state of nature, determines the utility of both players. This paper analyzes a dynamic Bayesian persuasion model where the state of nature evolves according to a Markovian law. Here, the sender always knows the realized state while the receiver randomly gets to know it. We discuss the value of the sender when he becomes more and more patient and its relation to the \emph{revelation rate}, namely the probability at which the true state is revealed to the receiver at any stage. } |
| Date: | 2022–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2204.08659&r= |
| By: | Jérôme Hergueux (BETA - Bureau d'Économie Théorique et Appliquée - AgroParisTech - UNISTRA - Université de Strasbourg - UL - Université de Lorraine - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement); Nicolas Jacquemet (PSE - Paris School of Economics - ENPC - École des Ponts ParisTech - ENS-PSL - École normale supérieure - Paris - PSL - Université Paris sciences et lettres - UP1 - Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement, CES - Centre d'économie de la Sorbonne - UP1 - Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique); Stéphane Luchini (AMSE - Aix-Marseille Sciences Economiques - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - AMU - Aix Marseille Université - ECM - École Centrale de Marseille - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique); Jason Shogren (UW - University of Wyoming) |
| Abstract: | Public good games are at the core of many environmental challenges. In such social dilemmas, a large share of people endorse the norm of reciprocity. A growing literature complements this finding with the observation that many players exhibit a self-serving bias in reciprocation: "weak reciprocators" increase their contributions as a function of the effort level of the other players, but less than proportionally. In this paper, we build upon a growing literature on truth-telling to argue that weak reciprocity might be best conceived not as a preference, but rather as a symptom of an internal trade-off at the player level between (i) the truthful revelation of their private reciprocal preference, and (ii) the economic incentives they face (which foster free-riding). In truth-telling experiments, many players misrepresent private information when this is to their material benefit, but to a significantly lesser extent than what would be expected based on the profit-maximizing strategy. We apply this behavioral insight to strategic situations, and test whether the preference revelation properties of the classic voluntary contribution game can be improved by offering players the possibility to sign a classic truth-telling oath. Our results suggest that the honesty oath helps increase cooperation (by 33% in our experiment). Subjects under oath contribute in a way which is more consistent with (i) the contribution they expect from the other players and (ii) their normative views about the right contribution level. As a result, the distribution of social types elicited under oath differs from the one observed in the baseline: some free-riders, and many weak reciprocators, now behave as pure reciprocators. |
| Keywords: | Cooperation,Reciprocity,Social preferences,Public goods,Truth-telling oath |
| Date: | 2022–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:cesptp:halshs-03666626&r= |
| By: | Andrea Attar (TSE - Toulouse School of Economics - UT1 - Université Toulouse 1 Capitole - Université Fédérale Toulouse Midi-Pyrénées - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement, CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique); Thomas Mariotti (TSE - Toulouse School of Economics - UT1 - Université Toulouse 1 Capitole - Université Fédérale Toulouse Midi-Pyrénées - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement, CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique); François Salanié (TSE - Toulouse School of Economics - UT1 - Université Toulouse 1 Capitole - Université Fédérale Toulouse Midi-Pyrénées - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement, PDG de l’Institut national de recherche pour l'agriculture, l'alimentation et l'environnement (INRAE)) |
| Abstract: | This article surveys recent attempts at characterizing competitive allocations under adverse selection when each informed agent can privately trade with several uninformed parties: that is, trade is nonexclusive. We rst show that requiring market outcomes to be robust to entry selects a unique candidate allocation, which involves cross-subsidies. We then study how to implement this allocation as the equilibrium outcome of a game in which the uninformed parties, acting as principals, compete by making oers to the informed agents. We show that equilibria typically fail to exist in competitive-screening games, in which these oers are simultaneous. We nally explore alternative extensive forms, and show that the candidate allocation can be implemented through a discriminatory ascending auction. These results yield sharp predictions for competitive nonexclusive markets. |
| Keywords: | Adverse Selection,Entry-Proofness,Discriminatory Pricing,Nonexclusive,Markets,Ascending Auctions |
| Date: | 2022–04–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:wpaper:hal-03629592&r= |
| By: | Johannes Hörner (TSE - Toulouse School of Economics - UT1 - Université Toulouse 1 Capitole - Université Fédérale Toulouse Midi-Pyrénées - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement, CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique); Anna Sanktjohanser (Yale University [New Haven], TSE - Toulouse School of Economics - UT1 - Université Toulouse 1 Capitole - Université Fédérale Toulouse Midi-Pyrénées - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement) |
| Abstract: | We consider a repeated game, in which due to private information and a lack of flexible transfers, cooperation cannot be sustained efficiently. In each round, the buyer either buys from the seller or takes an outside option. The fluctuating outside option may be public or private information. When the buyer visits, the seller chooses what quality to provide. We find that the buyer initially forgoes mutually beneficial trades before then visiting more often than he would like to, myopically. Under private information, the relationship recurrently undergoes gradual self-reinforcing downturns when trust is broken and instantaneous recoveries when loyalty is shown. |
| Keywords: | Trust,Loyalty,Imperfect Monitoring |
| Date: | 2022–04–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:wpaper:hal-03632455&r= |
| By: | Renato Gomes (TSE - Toulouse School of Economics - UT1 - Université Toulouse 1 Capitole - Université Fédérale Toulouse Midi-Pyrénées - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement, CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique); Jean-Marie Lozachmeur (TSE - Toulouse School of Economics - UT1 - Université Toulouse 1 Capitole - Université Fédérale Toulouse Midi-Pyrénées - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement, CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique); Lucas Maestri (FGV-EPGE - Universidad de Brazil) |
| Abstract: | We study oligopolistic competition by firms practicing second-degree price discrimination. In line with the literature on demand estimation, our theory allows for comovements between consumers' taste for quality and propensity to switch brands. If low-type consumers are sufficiently less (more) brand loyal than high types, (i) quality provision is inefficiently low at the bottom (high at the top) of the product line, and (ii) informational rents are negative (positive) for high types, while positive (negative) for low types. We produce testable comparative statics on pricing and quality provision, and show that more competition (in that consumers become less brand-loyal) is welfare-decreasing whenever it tightens incentive constraints (so much so that monopoly may be welfare-superior to oligopoly). Interestingly, pure-strategy equilibria fail to exist whenever brand loyalty is sufficiently different across consumers types. Accordingly, price/quality dispersion ensues from the interplay between self-selection constraints and heterogeneity in brand loyalty. |
| Keywords: | Price dispersion,Preference correlation,Asymmetric information,Price discrimination,Competition |
| Date: | 2022–04–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:wpaper:hal-03629496&r= |
| By: | Shota Ichihashi; Alex Smolin |
| Abstract: | A seller faces a consumer with an uncertain value for the product. The seller has imperfect private information about the value and requests additional data to set the price. The consumer can decline any request. The consumer's willingness to provide data depends on his belief about the seller's type which in turn depends on the request. We show that the type uncertainty limits the scope of data collection: All equilibrium payoffs are spanned by fully pooling equilibria in which the seller collects the same data regardless of the type. The seller's private information lowers efficiency and profits, but benefits the consumer by fueling his skepticism and preventing excessive data collection. Having less private information may enable the seller to collect more data directly from the consumer and may lower the overall consumer welfare. |
| Date: | 2022–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2204.08723&r= |
| By: | Daniel F. Garrett (TSE - Toulouse School of Economics - UT1 - Université Toulouse 1 Capitole - Université Fédérale Toulouse Midi-Pyrénées - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement); Renato Gomes (TSE - Toulouse School of Economics - UT1 - Université Toulouse 1 Capitole - Université Fédérale Toulouse Midi-Pyrénées - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement, CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique); Lucas Maestri (FGV-EPGE - Universidad de Brazil) |
| Abstract: | We study competition by firms that simultaneously post (potentially nonlinear) tariffs to consumers who are privately informed about their tastes. Market power stems from informational frictions, in that consumers are heterogeneously informed about firms' offers. In the absence of regulation, all firms offer quantity discounts. As a result, relative to Bertrand pricing, imperfect competition benefits disproportionately more consumers whose willingness to pay is high, rather than low. Regulation imposing linear pricing hurts the former but benefits the latter consumers. While consumer surplus increases, firms' profits decrease, enough to drive down utilitarian welfare. By contrast, improvements in market transparency increase utilitarian welfare, and achieve similar gains on consumer surplus as imposing linear pricing, although with limited distributive impact. On normative grounds, our analysis suggests that banning price discrimination is warranted only if its distributive benefits have a weight on the societal objective. |
| Keywords: | Asymmetric information,Informational frictions,Linear pricing,Nonlinear pricing,Oligopoly |
| Date: | 2022–04–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:wpaper:hal-03629517&r= |
| By: | Frédéric Cherbonnier (TSE - Toulouse School of Economics - UT1 - Université Toulouse 1 Capitole - Université Fédérale Toulouse Midi-Pyrénées - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement); David J. Salant; Karine van der Straeten (TSE - Toulouse School of Economics - UT1 - Université Toulouse 1 Capitole - Université Fédérale Toulouse Midi-Pyrénées - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement, CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique) |
| Abstract: | An auction of transport capacity can only roll forward if competitive bidders show up at the start. To characterize bidding behavior, we develop a model with a single incumbent potentially in competition with a single challenger; should the challenger obtain slots, the two firms will engage post-auction in capacity con-strained price competition. We show how the auction structure, that is, whether the slots are auctioned one at a time, and if not, how they are packaged affects the outcome. Our key finding is that the division of the available slots into tranches can significantly affect the outcome of the auction. Absent any set-asides, a single auc-tion for all the slots will almost certainly be won by an incumbent. Set-asides can enable the challenger to win one or more packages of slots. Further, when the slots are split up, and auctioned one-at-a-time or in batches, a challenger's prospects improve significantly, and no longer rely only on set-asides. The implications of our analysis are (a) the outcome will depend crucially on auction design decisions,(b) set-asides for challengers can help and (c) an auction that results in successful entry by challengers may result in reduced auction revenues and industry profits. |
| Keywords: | Rail transportation,Open access,Auctions,Regulation |
| Date: | 2022–04–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:wpaper:hal-03629619&r= |
| By: | Tien Mai; Arunesh Sinha |
| Abstract: | Vaccine delivery in under-resourced locations with security risks is not just challenging but also life threatening. The current COVID pandemic and the need to vaccinate have added even more urgency to this issue. Motivated by this problem, we propose a general framework to set-up limited temporary (vaccination) centers that balance physical security and desired (vaccine) service coverage with limited resources. We set-up the problem as a Stackelberg game between the centers operator (defender) and an adversary, where the set of centers is not fixed a priori but is part of the decision output. This results in a mixed combinatorial and continuous optimization problem. As part of our scalable approximation of this problem, we provide a fundamental contribution by identifying general duality conditions of switching max and min when both discrete and continuous variables are involved. We perform detailed experiments to show that the solution proposed is scalable in practice. |
| Date: | 2022–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2204.11451&r= |
| By: | Tierney, Ryan (Department of Economics) |
| Abstract: | We study the package assignment model and its consequences for the model of matching with transfers. We show that on rich domains, strategy-proofness, joint monotonicity (of Barberà, Berga, and Moreno [American Economic Review, 106 (2016)]), anonymity in welfare, and continuity in welfare together imply conditional efficiency: the allocation cannot be improved by re-allocation of packages, keeping packages intact. Thus, rules are restricted to choosing, for each problem, a set of objects to distribute and a partitioning of these. Labor markets are auctions with unit demand, once anonymity is modified to account for productivity differences. In this case, conditional efficiency is no blocking (by matched pairs), the core component of the standard solution concept of stability. Thus, while it is known that stable outcomes can be strategy-proof, we show that a component of stability is necessary for incentives. These results are derived from the following result, also discovered here, on the restricted quasilinear domain: weak pairwise strategy-proofness, anonymity in welfare, and continuity in welfare imply no-envy. |
| Keywords: | Assignment game; Package auctions; Strategy-proofness |
| JEL: | C78 D44 D47 |
| Date: | 2022–04–22 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:sdueko:2022_006&r= |
| By: | P. Battiston; L. Chollete; S. Harrison |
| Abstract: | Evidence in the applied literature indicates that policies intended to stimulate positive externalities via coercion can backfire. For example, Davis (2008) finds that when in 1989, the government of Mexico City tried to control air pollution by banning most drivers from driving their vehicle one weekday per week, many drivers bought another, used, high emissions car, which ended up worsening pollution. In order to test for such effects, we run a repeated public goods experiment where subjects are randomly forced to contribute. All group members are informed about forcing after it happens. We find that when random forcing is present, intended contributions are significantly larger in absolute terms. Moreover, contributions decrease significantly after being forced to contribute, and tend to increase after another group member is forced to contribute. Hence, our results indicate that forcing mechanisms have indirect effects that must be taken into account when assessing the overall impact of policies aimed at stimulating positive externalities. |
| Keywords: | unintended consequences, public good game, laboratory experiment, reciprocity |
| JEL: | C92 D04 H41 |
| Date: | 2022 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:par:dipeco:2022-ep01&r= |
| By: | Victor Ginsburgh; Juan D. Moreno-Ternero |
| Abstract: | We analyze and evaluate the rules and results at the 2021 Eurovision Song Contest. We first concentrate on the various voting procedures, and explore several alternatives (inspired by classical contributions in social choice and game theory) that could make a difference for the results. We also discuss other important issues, such as simplicity, contrast effects and whether experts are better judges than tele-voters. Our findings raise the question of whether the voting procedures used by the Eurovision Song Contest authorities are fail-safe. We endorse instead the use of the so-called Shapley voting procedure for judges as well as tele-voters. |
| Keywords: | Eurovision Song Contest, Voting, Borda, Shapley Method, Biases |
| Date: | 2022–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:eca:wpaper:2013/342358&r= |
| By: | Niels Johannesen |
| Abstract: | This paper studies how the global minimum tax shapes national tax policies and welfare in a formal model of international tax competition with heterogeneous countries. The net welfare effect is generally ambiguous from the perspective of non-havens. On the one hand, the global minimum tax raises their welfare by curbing profit shifting, which boosts government revenue. One the other hand, it lowers their welfare by increasing equilibrium tax rates in havens, which transfers real resources from non-haven firms to haven governments. The net welfare effect is unambiguously positive when the global minimum rate is so high that profit shifting ends. |
| Keywords: | profit shifting, international taxation, global minimum tax, tax avoidance multinational firms |
| Date: | 2022 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_9527&r= |