Games in Dynamic‐Epistemic Logic

The author discusses games of both perfect and imperfect information at two levels of structural detail: players' local actions, and their global powers for determining outcomes of the game. Matching logical languages are proposed for both. In particular, at the 'action level', imperfect information games naturally model a combined 'dynamic‐epistemic language'– and correspondences are found between special axioms in this language and particular modes of playing games with their information dynamics. At the 'outcome level', the paper presents suitable notions of game equivalence, and some simple representation results.     

Endogenous Games and Mechanisms: Side Payments Among Players

We characterize the outcomes of games when players may make binding offers of strategy contingent side payments before the game is played. This does not always lead to efficient outcomes, despite complete information and costless contracting. The characterizations are illustrated in a series of examples, including voluntary contribution public good games, Cournot and Bertrand oligopoly, principal–agent problems, and commons games, among others.     

Working and Shirking: Equilibrium in Public-Goods Games with Overlapping Generations of Players

In overlapping-generations models of public-goods provision,in which the contribution decision is binary and lifetimes arefinite, the set of symmetric subgame-perfect equilibria canbe categorized into three types: seniority equilibria, in whichplayers contribute (effort) until a predetermined age and thenshirk thereafter; dependency equilibria, in which players initiallyshirk, then contribute for a set number of periods, then shirkfor the remainder of their lives; and sabbatical equilibria,in which players alternately contribute and shirk for periodsof varying length before entering a final stage of shirking.In a world without discounting we establish conditions for equilibriumand demonstrate that for any dependency equilibrium there isa seniority equilibrium that Pareto dominates it ex ante. Weproceed to characterize generational preferences over alternativeseniority equilibria. We explore the aggregation of these preferencesby embedding the public-goods provision game in a voting frameworkand solving for the majority-rule equilibria. In this way wecan think of political processes as providing one natural frameworkfor equilibrium selection in the original public-goods provisiongame.     

Finitely Many Players with Bounded Recall in Infinitely Repeated Games

We study the set of limit points of equilibrium payoffs in n-player repeated games, with bounded recall, when the memory capacities of all the players grow to infinity. Two main issues are explored: (i) whether differential information enables players to play correlatively, and (ii) the extent to which boundedly rational players can learn others′ behavior patterns and conceal their own. Journal of Economic Literature Classification Number: 026.     

国际贸易可疑洗钱行为透析

贸易洗钱是通过虚构的交易事实使行为人及其相对人对所转移的资产享有表面上合法的财产权利的行为.鉴于账户洗钱的现行反洗钱立法对新兴的贸易洗钱打击不力,建议认清贸易洗钱的本质,提高识别可疑行为的能力,建立跨行业的反洗钱机制.本文的主要贡献在于首次提出并全面分析基于国际贸易的洗钱行为.     

Bayesian Estimation of Entry Games with Multiple Players and Multiple Equilibria

Entry game models are often used to study the nature of firms' profits and the nature of competition among firms in empirical studies. However, when there are multiple players in an oligopoly market, the resulting multiple equilibria have made it difficult in previous studies to estimate the payoff functions of players in complete information, static and discrete games without using unreasonable assumptions. To overcome this difficulty, the present paper proposes a practical estimation method for an entry game with three players using a Bayesian approach. Some mild assumptions are imposed on the payoff function, and the average competitive effect is used to capture the entry effect of the number of firms. Our proposed methodology is applied to Japanese airline data from the year 2000, when there were three major airline companies, ANA, JAL and JAS. The model comparison is conducted to investigate the nature of strategic interaction among these Japanese airline companies.     

Games for urban and regional planning: A pedagogical tool

Dissatisfaction with the normative models developed within urban and regional planning during the sixties has led to an increased interest in the use of games. This technique has above all been applied as a pedagogical aid in order to bring reality into the classroom. The use of the gaming technique has successively broadened and politicians, administrators, planners, ordinary people, etc. can now take an active part in a number of different games. Together, they try to create an increased understanding of the existing interaction between the key figures of the social, economic and physical planning process. Examples are given of different games, both manual and computer types. The function of a game is briefly threefold: education, research and planning. All these functions are dealt with. We have a number of alternatives facing us in the future and we need to know far more about them than we do to-day. By using common forecasting methods we can produce future alternatives for a particular sector or special activity. However, we encounter considerable difficulties when it comes to analyzing an entire situation or complex question with all the resultant combinations of alternatives. Even if we above all require research on these matters, the group process involved in a planning game affords an environment where the combinatory aspects of results in future situations can be illustrated in an all-around manner.     

The Game Take–or–Play: A Paradox of Rationality in Simultaneous Move Games

We show that paradoxical conclusions similar to those emerging from reasonings of backward induction can arise also in simultaneous move games with incomplete information.
In a static setting, these paradoxes are particularly puzzling, because the usual attempts to avoid the backward induction solution do not work.
In a dynamic setting, there is a way out of the paradoxes, which hinges on a (possibly endogenous) uncertainty over the past behaviour of the players and does not call for a long time–horizon.     

Classroom Games: A Prisoner's Dilemma

This survey of intermediate microeconomic textbooks will be helpful to those in the throes of selecting a suitable text. The author identifies the major review criteria and examines nine widely used books, grouping them by type of approach.     

Epistemic logics and their game theoretic applications: Introduction

Summary. This paper is written as an introduction to epistemic logics and their game theoretic applications. It starts with both semantics and syntax of classical logic, and goes to the Hilbert-style proof-theory and Kripke-style model theory of epistemic logics. In these theories, we discuss individual decision making in some simple game examples. In particular, we will discuss the distinction between beliefs and knowledge, and how false beliefs play roles in game theoretic decision making. Finally, we discuss extensions of epistemic logics to incorporate common knowledge. In the extension, we discuss also false beliefs on common knowledge. Received: July 1, 2000; revised version: April 19, 2001     

Olympic Games: No legacy for sports

Countries whose cities host the Summer Olympic Games increase significantly their success during the competition. We study whether such effect is lasting or not. We compute the effect of hosting on the total number of medals in the subsequent games. To confront the issue that the selection of the host city is endogenous, we use a natural counterfactual: countries whose cities also bid for the Olympics but were not selected by the International Olympic Committee. In all cases, we find that Olympic success on medals fades away immediately after hosting.     

Extensive and strategic forms: Games and models for games

This paper aims to make precise, in the context of epistemic models for games, some relations between the normal or strategic form representation of a game and the extensive or dynamic form representation. It is argued, first, that epistemic models defined for strategic form representations provide all the materials necessary for defining models for corresponding extensive form representations of the game, models that provide information about the way the game is played that is sufficient to evaluate the rationality of the choices that the players make, and are disposed to make, in the course of playing the dynamic game. Second, two definitions of rationality are compared — one for strategy choices in the normal form representation, and one for the individual choices that the player is disposed to make in the course of playing the dynamic game. It is shown that they are essentially equivalent in games with perfect recall. The main focus is on the intuitive foundational assumptions about rationality and dynamic choice that are needed to motivate the definitions. It is argued that to evaluate the rationality of a player's choices in a dynamic context, it is essential to distinguish passive knowledge (knowledge about nature and about the prior beliefs and strategy choices of other players that is based on observation and inference) fromactive knowledge (knowledge about one's own choices and future choices that is grounded in one's decisions).     

Geopolitics in the South Caucasus: Local and External Players

This article discusses geopolitics in the South Caucasus, situated between the Black and Caspian Seas on the edge of Europe and Asia. Three independent states, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia, emerged here in 1991. The region may likely become economically and politically more important to the world in the twenty-first century.     

On Norms and Coordination Games: A Rent–Seeking Approach

The aim of this paper is to extend the rent–seeking literature to the equilibrium selection problem in competitive coordination games, i.e., games in which more than one equilibrium exists, and individuals' preferences are opposed. We analyze alternative correlated equilibria: contractual agreements and legally enforced equilibria. The latter are to be understood as the outcome of rents–seeking contests in which players invest resources in order to set a norm. The contest is analyzed in its basic two–person setting and later generalized to the two–populations case. There we show that the outcomes depend on the relative payoff structure of the game, the technological properties of the contest, and the population distribution. Finally, the efficiency analysis focuses not only on the extent of the rent dissipation, but also on the comparative analysis of the inefficiencies that arise in the market (not coordinated) equilibrium.     

Olson's Logic of Collective Action: A Review Article

This comment is offered as a defense of humanistic economics whose feminist credentials have been questioned by Julie Nelson. To her, our contribution is little less than orthodox economics, an ideology enshrining masculine values. We find her arguments based on a clear misreading or misinterpretation of our work. Especially needing correction is her charge that our key notion of a dual self is contaminated by traditional hierarchy and masculinized reason, and the idea of a ‘mushroom man’ operating in a social vacuum. Once her arguments, which we find contrived, are deconstructed it can be readily seen that there remains little difference between her own and our economics.     

国家是博弈的结果:一个折衷的观点

国家是博弈的结果,是最大的合作制度。它表现为国家所有成员博弈的结果——纳什均衡,但是这一纳什均衡要在集体理性下达到,则必须依赖于国家垄断拥有的暴力产业所生产的第三方惩罚威慑的可置信承诺。制度按其功能可分为四种类型:惩罚制度、立宪性制度即决策制度、信息制度以及非正式制度即文化(意识形态),在国家形态中,这四种制度演化为不同的形式。     

Welfare Measures in Dynamic Firm R&D Games

The present paper examines the welfare effects of a dynamic Research and Development (R&D) game at the firm level in a two-country, two-firm, intra-industry trade context. Economists do not use the trade balance as a measure of economic welfare, but it is often used in the public arena. The primary result of the paper is that the dynamic time path of social surplus and the trade balance do not track well together. This paper suggests that economists thinking about dynamic R&D games will have to defend imports as having a positive effect on social surplus regardless of trade balance effects.