Popularity of reinforcement-based and belief-based learning models: An evolutionary approach

In an evolutionary model, players from a given population meet randomly in pairs each instant to play a coordination game. At each instant, the learning model used is determined via some replicator dynamics that respects payoff fitness. We allow for two such models: a belief-based best-response model that uses a costly predictor, and a costless reinforcement-based one. This generates dynamics over the choice of learning models and the consequent choices of endogenous variables. We report conditions under which the long run outcomes are efficient (or inefficient) and they support the exclusive use of either of the models (or their co-existence).     

Majority rule with dollar voting

Consider a majority game in which each player's voting strength is equal to the player's payoff. In this game, wealth is the only source of power, and any coalition with more than half the wealth can take everything. Only extreme concentrations of wealth, in which one player owns everything or two players each own half the total wealth are undominated, and thus constitute the core. However, the stable set (von Neumann-Morgenstern solution) is significantly larger. Allocations in which one player has half the wealth, or which divide the total wealth equally among a number of players equal to a power of two, constitute the unique stable set. The stable set thus provides a formal model of an endogenous balance of power.     

Sequential bargaining with common values

We study the alternating-offers bargaining problem of assigning an indivisible and commonly valued object to one of two players who jointly own this object. The players are asymmetrically informed about the object’s value and have veto power over any settlement. There is no depreciation during the bargaining process which involves signalling of private information. We characterise the perfect Bayesian equilibrium outcome of this game which is unique if offers are required to be strictly increasing. Equilibrium agreement is reached gradually and non-deterministically. The better informed player obtains a rent.     

Substitution and complementarity between managers and subordinates: Evidence from British football

We use data on British football managers and teams over the 1994-2007 period to study substitution and complementarity between leaders and subordinates. We find for the Premier League (the highest level of competition) that, other things being equal, managers who themselves played at a higher level raise the productivity of less-skilled teams by more than that of highly skilled teams. This is consistent with the hypothesis that one function of a top manager is to communicate to subordinates the skills needed to succeed, since less skilled players have more to learn. However, we also find that managers with more accumulated professional managing experience raise the productivity of talented players by more than that of less-talented players. This is consistent with the hypothesis that a further function of successful managers in high-performance workplaces is to manage the egos of elite workers. Such a function is potentially more important the more accomplished the workers are-as indicated, in our data, by teams with greater payrolls.     

湖北省优秀男子乒乓球运动员身体素质训练水平综合评价研究

通过对湖北省优秀男子乒乓球运动员12项身体素质指标的测试并加以分析,结合专家调查筛选出十字变向跑、1分钟双摇跳绳、立定跳远、1分钟仰卧起坐、扣杀高球为湖北省优秀男子乒乓球运动员的身体素质测试指标,计算指标中的权重值,得出各指标在身体素质中所占的百分比,经实验研究证明,满足测量学可靠性、有效性和客观性的要求,能反映出湖北省优秀乒乓球运动员的身体素质水平。     

NCAA basketball: when does recruiting talent translate into wins for power conferences?

NCAA men’s basketball teams are spending an increasing amount of money on recruiting expenditures in an effort to win more games. We examine the recruiting quality of both freshmen and returning players to determine the impact of recruiting on a power conference team’s success. In particular, we identify the point at which players of different recruiting quality begin to contribute to a team’s success and estimate the impact of returning players by year and position. We find that elite freshmen guards are the only position that immediately impacts a team’s success, while forwards and centers need one or more seasons to develop into a player that generates wins for his team. We conclude by noting how these results may inform coaches regarding the makeup of talent and positions on their roster.     

Inefficient entry order in preemption games

In a preemption game, players decide when to take an irreversible action. Delaying the action exogenously increases payoffs, but there is an early mover advantage. Riordan (1992) shows that in a preemption game with two asymmetric players, players act in decreasing order of efficiency. This provides a microfoundation to the assumption that entry in a market occurs in the order of profitability, commonly used in the empirical analysis of market entry. We provide a counterexample showing that with more than two players this intuitive result can be reversed. We present a preemption game of entry into a new market. The potential entrants are three asymmetric firms: one “efficient” firm with high post-entry profits, and two “inefficient firms”. We show that the set of parameters such that the equilibrium entry order does not reflect the efficiency ranking is nonempty, and analyse which changes in post-entry profits preserve this entry order.     

Spatial pillage game

A pillage game is a coalitional game as a model of Hobbesian anarchy. The spatial pillage game introduces a spatial feature into the pillage game. Players are located in regions and can travel from one region to another. The players can form a coalition and combine their power only within their destination regions, which limits the exertion of the power of each coalition. Under this spatial restriction, a coalition can pillage less powerful coalitions without any cost. The feasibility of pillages between coalitions determines the dominance relation that defines stable states in which powers among the players are endogenously balanced. With the spatial restriction, the set of stable states changes. However, if the players have forecasting ability, then the set of stable states does not change with the spatial restriction. Core, stable set, and farsighted core are adopted as alternative solution concepts.     

Betting on a buzz: Mispricing and inefficiency in online sportsbooks

Bookmakers sell claims to bettors that depend on the outcomes of professional sports events. Like other financial assets, the wisdom of crowds could help sellers to price these claims more efficiently. We use the Wikipedia profile page views of professional tennis players involved in over 10,000 singles matches to construct a buzz factor. This measures the difference between players in their pre-match page views relative to the usual number of views they received over the previous year. The buzz factor significantly predicts mispricing by bookmakers. Using this fact to forecast match outcomes, we demonstrate that a strategy of betting on players who received more pre-match buzz than their opponents can generate substantial profits. These results imply that sportsbooks could price outcomes more efficiently by listening to the buzz.     

Recurrent crises in global games

Global games have unique equilibria in which aggregate behavior changes sharply when an underlying random fundamental crosses some threshold. This property relies on the existence of dominance regions: all players have a highest and lowest action that, for some fundamentals, is strictly dominant. But if the fundamental follows a random walk, it eventually spends nearly all of its time in these regions: crises gradually disappear. We obtain recurring crises by adding a single large player who lacks dominance regions. We also show that in order to obtain recurring crises, one must either relax dominance regions or restrict to fundamentals that continually return to or cross over a fixed region.     

Thanks for the memories: baseball veterans' end-of-career salaries

It is well-established that a baseball player's salary is based on his performance, experience, star status, bargaining power, mobility and his team's ability to pay. This paper focuses on veteran players who are on the brink of retirement and on the determinants of their salaries. It is found that a veteran's end-of-career peak salary depends upon how his career performance, that his most recent performance is irrelevant unless he has spent his entire career with one team, and that the average veteran's salary peaks after 9 years in the Majors. A corollary inference is that general managers recognize and reward player performance over the long haul in comparison with others who have played at that player's principal position, and with a nod to how history will evaluate that player. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Winner’s effort maximization in large contests

We investigate the temporal structure that maximizes the winner’s effort in large homogeneous contests. We find that the winner’s effort ranges from a lower bound of 0 to an upper bound of one third of the value of the prize, depending on the temporal structure; the upper (lower) bound is approached with an infinite number of players playing sequentially (simultaneously) in the first periods (period). Nevertheless, when the number of players is large but finite, we show that winner’s effort is maximized when all players play sequentially except in the very last period and that, within the family of such optimal temporal structures, more players play simultaneously in the very last period than sequentially in all other periods. Furthermore, out of all players, the percentage of those playing simultaneously in the very last period goes to 100% as the number of players grows larger and larger.     

Making Public Policy: The New Philanthropists and American Education

Power in K–12 education is rapidly moving from local school boards and government to extraordinarily wealthy private philanthropists. Building networks among nonprofits, government agencies, school districts, and others, private foundations such as the Gates, Broad, and Walton family foundations are fundamentally restructuring American K–12 education. The Common Core State Standards, teacher evaluation, and charter schools are a few of the initiatives these funders are backing. The massive influx of private money into education policy and its influence over public education raises questions around the proper role of philanthropy in a democracy. In a society with increasing wealth inequality, should the economic elite be able to gain further power to shape social institutions through giving? Are there or should there be any limits to this power? Examining specific trends and events in education philanthropy over the last 10 years, this article identifies key players in philanthropic education reform and argues that philanthropy in education is now playing a policy‐making role—without checks and balances—that is qualitatively and quantitatively different than before. I conclude with a cautionary note on the dangers of letting education policy become the domain of the economic elite.     

Determinacy of equilibrium in outcome game forms

We show the generic finiteness of the number of probability distributions on outcomes induced by Nash equilibria for two-person game forms such that either (i) one of the players has no more than two strategies or (ii) both of the players have three strategies, and (iii) for outcome game forms with three players, each with at most two strategies. Finally, we exhibit an example of a game form with three outcomes and three players for which the Nash equilibria of the associated game induce a continuum of payoffs for an open non-empty set of utility profiles.     

What restrictions do Bayesian games impose on the value of information?

In a Bayesian game players play an unknown game. Before the game starts some players may receive a signal regarding the specific game actually played. Typically, information structures that determine different signals, induce different equilibrium payoffs. In two-person zero-sum games the equilibrium payoff measures the value of the particular information structure which induces it. We pose a question as to what restrictions Bayesian games impose on the value of information. We provide answers for two kinds of information structures: symmetric, where both players are equally informed, and one-sided, where only one player is informed.     

The strategic interaction between managers and workers in Soviet industrial enterprises: Work-place motivation and economic performance

We construct a model of Soviet industrial enterprises, examining the strategic interaction between managers and workers as technology and workers' pay/performance relations evolve. Before 1965, when both players started sharing a bonus fund, workers received piece wages and selected their effort independently of management. With standardised technology, this regime fostered economic growth, at least until the weakening of the pay/performance nexus in 1965. After 1965, the game changed: anything making one player less motivated engendered a similar action by the other. The economy's vulnerability as technology changed and inflation weakened motivation no doubt contributed to its recent collapse.     

Solutions for cooperative games with r alternatives

We consider games with n players and r alternatives. In these games each player must choose one and only one alternative, reaching an ordered partition of the set of players. An extension of the Shapley value to this framework is studied. Received: 1 November 1997 / Accepted: 24 January 1999     

Asymptotic interpretations for equilibria of nonatomic games

We show that a mixed equilibrium of a semi-anonymous nonatomic game can be used to generate pure-strategy profiles for finite games randomly generated from the type distribution of the nonatomic game. As the numbers of players involved in the finite games increase, the generated profiles will be asymptotically equilibrium. The converse of this result is also true, i.e., a mixed-strategy profile that is not an equilibrium for the nonatomic game will not be able to achieve the above asymptotic rationality for large finite games. The combined finding can be specialized to situations where the nonatomic game is anonymous and where the given equilibrium is pure. Besides their practical values, these results offer yet one more justification for the study of nonatomic games. They also suggest that efforts may be better spent on searching for mixed rather than pure equilibria of nonatomic games.     

Deterministic multi-player Dynkin games

A multi-player Dynkin game is a sequential game in which at every stage one of the players is chosen, and that player can decide whether to continue the game or to stop it, in which case all players receive some terminal payoff.We study a variant of this model, where the order by which players are chosen is deterministic, and the probability that the game terminates once the chosen player decides to stop may be strictly less than 1.We prove that a subgame-perfect ε-equilibrium in Markovian strategies exists. If the game is not degenerate this ε-equilibrium is actually in pure strategies.     

Organizational power: Should remuneration heterogeneity mirror hierarchy?

We model and experimentally investigate effort levels in team production as a public good game with heterogeneous remuneration. In a hierarchically organized firm, team leaders (allocators) determine the effort levels of all team members. When the allocator receives equal payment or twice as much as the other workers, this results in the same team production, but when the allocator receives only half of what the other workers receive, team production is diminished.