Log-concave functions and transformations thereof
Dihan Zou
I summarize Bagnoli and Bergstrom (2005)'s review on log-concave functions, make several corrections, and augment the discussion with further results that can be useful in obtaining monotone hazard rate. I also provide an application of monopoly pricing, where strict logconcavity of demand curve implies strict concavity of the revenue function.
Nash equilibria of quasisupermodular games
Lu Yu
We prove three results on the existence and structure of Nash equilibria for quasisupermodular games. A theorem is purely order-theoretic, and the other two involve topological hypotheses. Our topological results genralize Zhou's theorem (for supermodular games) and Calciano's theorem.
Communication in the Infinitely Repeated Prisoner's Dilemma: Theory and Experiments
Maximilian Andres
So far, the theory of equilibrium selection in the infinitely repeated prisoner's dilemma is insensitive to communication possibilities. To address this issue, we incorporate the assumption that communication reduces -- but does not entirely eliminate -- an agent's uncertainty that the other agent follows a cooperative strategy into the theory. Because of this, agents still worry about the payoff from cooperating when the other one defects, i.e. the sucker's payoff S, and, games with communication are more conducive to cooperation than games without communication. This theory is supported by data from laboratory experiments, and by machine learning based evaluation of the communication content.
Regulating Oligopolistic Competition
Kai Hao Yang, Alexander K. Zentefis
We consider the problem of how to regulate an oligopoly when firms have private information about their costs. In the environment, consumers make discrete choices over goods, and minimal structure is placed on the manner in which firms compete. In the optimal regulatory policy, the regulator need only solicit prices from firms, and based on those prices, charge them taxes or give them subsidies, and impose on each firm a ``yardstick'' price cap that depends on the posted prices of competing firms.
Benefiting from Bias: Delegating to Encourage Information Acquisition
Ian Ball, Xin Gao
A principal delegates decisions to a biased agent. Payoffs depend on a state that the principal cannot observe. Initially, the agent does not observe the state, but he can acquire information about it at a cost. We characterize the principal's optimal delegation set. This set features a cap on high decisions and a gap around the agent's ex ante favorite decision. It may even induce ex-post Pareto-dominated decisions. Under certain conditions on the cost of information acquisition, we show that the principal prefers delegating to an agent with a small bias than to an unbiased agent.
Reformulating the Value Restriction and the Not-Strict Value Restriction in Terms of Possibility Preference Map
Fujun Hou
In social choice theory, Sen's value restriction and Pattanaik's not-strict value restriction are both attractive conditions for testing social preference transitivity and/or non-empty social choice set existence. This article introduces a novel mathematical representation tool, called possibility preference map (PPM), for weak orderings, and then reformulates the value restriction and the not-strict value restriction in terms of PPM. The reformulations all appear elegant since they take the form of minmax.
Asset Trading in Continuous Time: A Cautionary Tale
William R. Zame
The continuous time model of dynamic asset trading is the central model of modern finance. Because trading cannot in fact take place at every moment of time, it would seem desirable to show that the continuous time model can be viewed as the limit of models in which trading can occur only at (many) discrete moments of time. This paper demonstrates that, if we take terminal wealth constraints and self-financing constraints as seriously in the discrete model as in the continuous model, then the continuous trading model need not be the limit of discrete trading models. This raises serious foundational questions about the continuous time model.
Constitutional Implementation of Affirmative Action Policies in India
Tayfun Sonmez, M. Bumin Yenmez
India is home to a comprehensive affirmative action program that reserves a fraction of positions at governmental institutions for various disadvantaged groups. While there is a Supreme Court-endorsed mechanism to implement these reservation policies when all positions are identical, courts have refrained from endorsing explicit mechanisms when positions are heterogeneous. This lacunae has resulted in widespread adoption of unconstitutional mechanisms, countless lawsuits, and inconsistent court rulings. Formulating mandates in the landmark Supreme Court judgment Saurav Yadav (2020) as technical axioms, we show that the 2SMH-DA mechanism is uniquely suited to overcome these challenges.
On Maximum Weighted Nash Welfare for Binary Valuations
Warut Suksompong, Nicholas Teh
We consider the problem of fairly allocating indivisible goods to agents with weights representing their entitlements. A natural rule in this setting is the maximum weighted Nash welfare (MWNW) rule, which selects an allocation maximizing the weighted product of the agents' utilities. We show that when agents have binary valuations, a specific version of MWNW is resource- and population-monotone, satisfies group-strategyproofness, and can be implemented in polynomial time.
Comment on Jackson and Sonnenschein (2007) "Overcoming Incentive Constraints by Linking Decisions"
Ian Ball, Matt O. Jackson, Deniz Kattwinkel
We correct a bound in the definition of approximate truthfulness used in the body of the paper of Jackson and Sonnenschein (2007). The proof of their main theorem uses a different permutation-based definition, implicitly claiming that the permutation-version implies the bound-based version. We show that this claim holds only if the bound is loosened. The new bound is still strong enough to guarantee that the fraction of lies vanishes as the number of problems grows, so the theorem is correct as stated once the bound is loosened.
Markovian Persuasion with Two States
Galit Ashkenazi-Golan, Penélope Hernández, Zvika Neeman
et al.
This paper addresses the question of how to best communicate information over time in order to influence an agent's belief and induced actions in a model with a binary state of the world that evolves according to a Markov process, and with a finite number of actions. We characterize the sender's optimal message strategy in the limit, as the length of each period decreases to zero. The optimal strategy is not myopic. Depending on the agent's beliefs, sometimes no information is revealed, and sometimes the agent's belief is split into two well-chosen posterior beliefs.
Informational Robustness of Common Belief in Rationality
Gabriel Ziegler
In this note, I explore the implications of informational robustness under the assumption of common belief in rationality. That is, predictions for incomplete-information games which are valid across all possible information structures. First, I address this question from a global perspective and then generalize the analysis to allow for localized informational robustness.
Choice and Market Design
Samson Alva, Battal Doğan
A textbook chapter on modeling choice behavior and designing institutional choice functions for matching and market design. The chapter is to appear in: Online and Matching-Based Market Design. Federico Echenique, Nicole Immorlica and Vijay V. Vazirani, Editors. Cambridge University Press. 2021
Probabilistic Fixed Ballot Rules and Hybrid Domains
Shurojit Chatterji, Souvik Roy, Soumyarup Sadhukhan
et al.
We study a class of preference domains that satisfies the familiar properties of minimal richness, diversity and no-restoration. We show that a specific preference restriction, hybridness, has been embedded in these domains so that the preferences are single-peaked at the "extremes" and unrestricted in the "middle". We also study the structure of strategy-proof and unanimous Random Social Choice Functions on these domains. We show them to be special cases of probabilistic fixed ballot rules (introduced by Ehlers, Peters, and Storcken (2002)).
The Inflation Game
Wolfgang Kuhle
We study a game where households convert paper assets, such as money, into consumption goods, to preempt inflation. The game features a unique equilibrium with high (low) inflation, if money supply is high (low). For intermediate levels of money supply, there exist multiple equilibria with either high or low inflation. Equilibria with moderate inflation, however, do not exist, and can thus not be targeted by a central bank. That is, depending on agents' equilibrium play, money supply is always either too high or too low for moderate inflation. We also show that inflation rates of long-lived goods, such as houses, cars, expensive watches, furniture, or paintings, are a leading indicator for broader, economy wide, inflation.
Fuzzy Core Equivalence in Large Economies: A Role for the Infinite-Dimensional Lyapunov Theorem
M. Ali Khan, Nobusumi Sagara
We present the equivalence between the fuzzy core and the core under minimal assumptions. Due to the exact version of the Lyapunov convexity theorem in Banach spaces, we clarify that the additional structure of commodity spaces and preferences is unnecessary whenever the measure space of agents is "saturated". As a spin-off of the above equivalence, we obtain the coincidence of the core, the fuzzy core, and the Schmeidler's restricted core under minimal assumptions. The coincidence of the fuzzy core and the restricted core has not been articulated anywhere.
Local Dominance
Emiliano Catonini, Jingyi Xue
We define notions of dominance between two actions in a dynamic game. Local dominance considers players who have a blurred view of the future and compare the two actions by first focusing on the outcomes that may realize at the current stage. When considering the possibility that the game may continue, they can only check that the local comparison is not overturned under the assumption of "continuing in the same way" after the two actions (in a newly defined sense). Despite the lack of forward planning, local dominance solves dynamic mechanisms that were found easy to play and implements social choice functions that cannot be implemented in obviously-dominant strategies.
Communication, Renegotiation and Coordination with Private Values
Yuval Heller, Christoph Kuzmics
An equilibrium is communication-proof if it is unaffected by new opportunities to communicate and renegotiate. We characterize the set of equilibria of coordination games with pre-play communication in which players have private preferences over the coordinated outcomes. The set of communication-proof equilibria is a small and relatively homogeneous subset of the set of qualitatively diverse Bayesian Nash equilibria. Under a communication-proof equilibrium, players never miscoordinate, play their jointly preferred outcome whenever there is one, and communicate only the ordinal part of their preferences. Moreover, such equilibria are robust to changes in players' beliefs and interim Pareto efficient
Third person enforcement in a prisoner's dilemma game
Tatsuhiro Shichijo
We theoretically study the effect of a third person enforcement on a one-shot prisoner's dilemma game played by two persons, with whom the third person plays repeated prisoner's dilemma games. We find that the possibility of the third person's future punishment causes them to cooperate in the one-shot game.
Price competition with uncertain quality and cost
Sander Heinsalu
Consumers in many markets are uncertain about firms' qualities and costs, so buy based on both the price and the quality inferred from it. Optimal pricing depends on consumer heterogeneity only when firms with higher quality have higher costs, regardless of whether costs and qualities are private or public. If better quality firms have lower costs, then good quality is sold cheaper than bad under private costs and qualities, but not under public. However, if higher quality is costlier, then price weakly increases in quality under both informational environments.