On the impossibility of achieving no regrets in repeated games

Regret-minimizing strategies for repeated games have been receiving increasing attention in the literature. These are simple adaptive behavior rules that lead to no regrets and, if followed by all players, exhibit nice convergence properties: the average play converges to correlated equilibrium, or even to Nash equilibrium in certain classes of games. However, the no-regret property relies on a strong assumption that each player treats her opponents as unresponsive and fully ignores the opponents’ possible reactions to her actions. We show that if at least one player is slightly responsive, it is impossible to achieve no regrets, and convergence results for regret minimization with responsive opponents are unknown.     

A Comparison of EPI Sampling, Probability Sampling, and Compact Segment Sampling Methods for Micro and Small Enterprises

Finding an efficient method for sampling micro- and small-enterprises (MSEs) for research and statistical reporting purposes is a challenge in developing countries, where registries of MSEs are often nonexistent or outdated. This lack of a sampling frame creates an obstacle in finding a representative sample of MSEs. This study uses computer simulations to draw samples from a census of businesses and non-businesses in the Tshwane Municipality of South Africa, using three different sampling methods: the traditional probability sampling method, the compact segment sampling method, and the World Health Organization's Expanded Programme on Immunization (EPI) sampling method. Three mechanisms by which the methods could differ are tested, the proximity selection of respondents, the at-home selection of respondents, and the use of inaccurate probability weights. The results highlight the importance of revisits and accurate probability weights, but the lesser effect of proximity selection on the samples' statistical properties.     

Flexibility at different stages in the life cycle of projects: An empirical illustration of the “freedom to maneuver”

Many textbooks on project management present illustrations concerning the relative size of project attributes during different project phases. The derived models all have attributes in common, such as uncertainty, significance of decisions, and degree of freedom to maneuver, that are typically high in the beginning of the project and low in the end. At the same time, variables such as the accumulated cost and available information begin at low levels and end up at a high level at the end of the project. Based on empirical data from projects, this paper illustrates and quantifies one of these attributes, the freedom to maneuver, in different project phases.     

Experiments Testing Multiobject Allocation Mechanisms

This paper reports the results of over 130 auctions conducted under controlled conditions to examine the robustness of several auction mechanisms to allocate multiple objects. The simultaneous discrete auction process used by the Federal Communications Commission to allocate Personal Communications licenses was contrasted with a sequential auction and a combinatorial auction over a variety of demand conditions. In test environments created to check only the minimum competency of the procedures, the simultaneous discrete auction process produces highly efficient allocations, approaching levels similar to those found with a continuous form of the auction, and it outperforms a sequential auction. However, in environments created to stress test the procedures, a combinatorial auction outperforms the simultaneous discrete auction.     

Do government owned banks trade market power for slack?

The ‘Quiet Life Hypothesis (QLH)’ posits that banks with market power have less incentives to maximize revenues and minimize cost. Especially government owned banks with a public mandate precluding profit maximization might succumb to a quiet life. We use a unified approach that simultaneously measures market power and efficiency to test the quiet life hypothesis of German savings banks. We find that average local market power declined between 1996 and 2006. Cost and profit efficiency remained constant. Nonparametric correlations are consistent with a quiet life regarding cost efficiency but not regarding profit efficiency. The quiet life on the cost side is negatively correlated with bank size, quality of loan portfolio and local per capita income. The last result indicates that the quiet cost life is therefore potentially due to benevolent excess consumption of local input factors by public savings banks.     

A Survey of Textbooks for Industrial Organization and Public Policy

All teachers of economics will be interested in the author's dissection of the industrial organization course into its components. Teachers of this specialty will find this survey particularly useful for its examination of how the major texts treat each of the components.     

Japanese Consumption,External Disequilibrium and their Statistical Measurement

Georgescu-Roegen's work is usually divided into two categories, his earlier work on consumer and production theory and his later concern with entropy and bioeconomics beginning with his 1966 introductory essay to his collected theoretical papers published in the volume Analytical Economics. Most economists usually praise his earlier work on pure theory and ignore his later work which is highly critical of neoclassical economics. Those economists sympathetic to his later work usually take the position that he “saw the light” and gave up neoclassical theory some time in the 1960s to turn his attention to the issues of resource scarcity and social institutions. It is argued here that there is an unbroken path running from Georgescu's work in pure theory in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s, through his writings on peasant economies in the 1960s, leading to his preoccupation with entropy and bioeconomics in the last 25 years of his life. That common thread is his preoccupation with “valuation.” The choices our species makes about resource use and the distribution of economic output depends upon our valuation framework. Georgescu-Roegen's work begins in the 1930s with a critical examination of the difficulties with the hedonistic valuation framework of neoclassical economics, moves in the 1960s to the conflict between social and hedonistic valuation, and culminates in the 1970s and 1980s with his examination of the conflict between individual, social, and environmental values. This paper traces the evolution of Georgescu-Roegen's thought about valuation and the environmental and social policy recommendations which arise out of his bioeconomic framework.