Recent Books on Evolutionary Game Theory

Books reviewed in this article
Fudenberg and David Levine, The Theory of Learning in Games
Josef Hofbauer and Karl Sigmund, Evolutionary Games and Population Dynamics
Larry Samuelson, Evolutionary Games and Equilibrium Selection
Fernando Vega-Redondo Evolution, Games, and Economic Behavior
Peyton Young, Individual Strategy and Social Structure, an Evolutionary Theory of Institutions     

Entrepreneurship: The role of extreme events

We use aggregate country data as well as individual level survey to uncover, for the first time, the effect of extreme events such as natural disasters and terrorist attacks on entrepreneurial activity. We find that natural disasters and terrorist attacks influence individual perceptions of the rewards to entrepreneurship and, more surprisingly, extreme events affect entrepreneurship rates positively in a robust and significant way.     

Defining Respectful Leadership: What It Is,How It Can Be Measured,and Another Glimpse at What It Is Related to

Research on work values shows that respectful leadership is highly desired by employees. On the applied side, however, the extant research does not offer many insights as to which concrete leadership behaviors are perceived by employees as indications of respectful leadership. Thus, to offer such insights, we collected and content analyzed employees’ narrations of encounters with respectful leadership (N ₁ = 426). The coding process resulted in 19 categories of respectful leadership spanning 149 leadership behaviors. Furthermore, to also harness this comprehensive repertoire for quantitative organizational research, we undertook two more studies (N _2a = 228; N _2b = 412) to empirically derive a feasible item-based measurement of respectful leadership and assess its psychometric qualities. In these studies, we additionally investigated the relationships between respectful leadership as assessed with this new measurement and employees’ vertical and contextual followership as assessed via subordinates’ identification with their leaders, their appraisal respect for their leaders, their feeling of self-determination, and their job satisfaction.     

A network economic game theory model of a service-oriented internet with choices and quality competition

This paper develops a new dynamic network economic model of Cournot-Nash competition for a service-oriented Internet in the case of service differentiation and quality competition. Each service provider seeks to maximize its own profit by determining its service volumes and service quality. We utilize variational inequality theory for the formulation of the governing Nash equilibrium as well as for the computational approach. We then construct the projected dynamical systems model, which provides a continuous-time evolution of the service providers service volumes and service quality levels, and whose set of stationary points coincides with the set of solutions to the variational inequality problem. We recall stability analysis results using a monotonicity approach and construct a discrete-time version of the continuous-time adjustment process, which yields an algorithm, with closed form expressions at each iteration. The algorithm is then utilized to compute the solutions to several numerical examples. A sensitivity analysis is also conducted.     

The Discretionary Economy

Some critics allege that many if not most economists are subject to "Panglossian tendencies" — that is, they are too quick to make excuses for apparently dysfunctional aspects of the status quo. This paper examines theoretical welfare economics as a possible exemplar of "Panglossian tendencies." A major focus is on the absence from both the pedagogic and the professional literatures of two key concepts bearing upon the evaluation of Pareto efficiency and social welfare maximization as competing criteria of economic policy analysis: the "isowelfare function" and the "supra-welfare region." These concepts are explicated herein using the familiar Edgeworth-Bowley box diagram illustrating the twoindividual, two-good pure exchange model. A higher level of awareness and appreciation among economists of these concepts might serve the beneficial purpose of downgrading the perceived significance of Pareto efficiency as an operational criterion of economic performance.     

Household survey data for research on well-being and behavior in Central Asia

This paper summarizes the micro-level survey evidence from Central Asia generated and analyzed in the period 1991–2012. We provide an exhaustive overview over all accessible individual and household-level surveys undertaken in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan – and of all academic papers published using these datasets. We argue that Central Asia is a fascinating region for the study of comparative economics given its dual experience of transition and development. However, the region is also understudied, in part due to lack of data, and especially due to a lack of panel data. We identify knowledge gaps derived from this lack of longitudinal surveys and suggest worthwhile areas for future research. Finally, we also present a new and novel individual-level panel dataset called “Life in Kyrgyzstan”.