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Report
Sustainable plans
We propose a definition of time consistent policy for infinite horizon economies with competitive private agents. Allocations and policies are defined as functions of the history of past policies. A sustainable equilibrium is a sequence of history-contingent policies and allocations that satisfy certain sequential rationality conditions for the government and for private agents. We provide a complete characterization of the sustainable equilibrium outcomes for a variant of Fischer?s (1980) model of capital taxation. We also relate our work to recent developments in the theory of repeated ...
Working Paper
If at first you don't succeed: an experimental investigation of the impact of repetition options on corporate takeovers
This paper models, and experimentally simulates, the free-rider problem in a takeover when the raider has the option to ?resolicit,? that is, to make a new offer after an offer has been rejected. In theory, the option to resolicit, by lowering offer credibility, increases the dissipative losses associated with free riding. In practice, the outcomes of our experiment, while quite closely tracking theory in the effective absence of an option to resolicit, differed dramatically from theory when a significant probability of resolicitation was introduced: The option to resolicit reduced the costs ...
Report
An experimental study of learning and limited information in games
We report on experiments that tested the predictions of competing theories of learning in games. Experimental subjects played a version of the three-person matching-pennies game. The unique mixed-strategy Nash equilibrium of this game is locally unstable under naive Bayesian learning. Sophisticated Bayesian learning predicts that expectations will converge to Nash equilibrium if players observe the entire history of play. Neither theory requires payoffs to be common knowledge. We develop maximum-likelihood tests for the independence conditions implied by the mixed-strategy Nash equilibrium. ...
Journal Article
Game strategy in fiscal straits: When government debts become large, lessons of game theory might help avoid a crisis
Related links: https://www.richmondfed.org/-/media/richmondfedorg/publications/research/econ_focus/2012/q4/feature4_weblinks.cfm
Working Paper
Financing, commitment and entry deterrence
Working Paper
Dynamic games with hidden actions and hidden states
We consider the large class of dynamic games in which each player?s actions are unobservable to the other players, and each player?s actions can influence a state variable that is unobservable to the other players. We develop an algorithm that solves for the subset of sequential equilibria in which equilibrium strategies are Markov in the privately observed state.
Working Paper
Multiple selves in intertemporal choice
We propose that individuals consider future versions of themselves to truly be separate persons, not simply as a convenient modeling device but in terms of actual brain systems and decision-making processes. Intertemporal choices are thus quite literally strategic interactions between multiple agents. Previous neuroscientific studies have found evidence that systems involved with Theory of Mind (that is, mentalizing other agents) are similar to those involved with prospection (imagining oneself in the future). We provide a conceptual framework for this work and suggest that, instead of ...
Working Paper
Bargaining a monetary union
Working Paper
On policy interactions among nations: when do cooperation and commitment matter?
This paper offers a framework to study commitment and cooperation issues in games with multiple policymakers. To reconcile some puzzles in the recent literature on the nature of policy interactions among nations, we prove that games characterized by different commitment and cooperation schemes can admit the same equilibrium outcome if certain spillover effects vanish at the common solution of these games. We provide a detailed discussion of these spillovers, showing that, in general, commitment and cooperation are nontrivial issues. Yet in linear-quadratic models with multiple policymakers, ...