On uniquely implementing cooperation in the prisoners' dilemma

Summary We consider the problem of a principle who wishes to induce two agents playing a one shot prisoner's dilemma to behave cooperatively. We assume that the principal cannot observe the actions of the agents, and is not able to change the strategy sets or payoff functions in the underlying game. The only power the principle has is to randomly delay the arrival of payoffs. Specifically, agents choose their one shot strategies, and then the principle randomly determines whether these are cheap talk, or if payoffs should be distributed. If the round is cheap talk, then each agent observes the strategy choice of the other and play moves to a new round. This continues until payoffs are distributed. We establish conditions under which the probability of cheap talk can be chosen at the beginning of the induced game in such a way that full cooperation is the only equilibrium outcome. The sufficiency condition is met by a wide class of economic interpretations of the prisoners' dilemma, including those involving strategic complementarities among players.The authors wish to thank Dilip Abreu, Robert Aumann, Michael Baye, James Friedman, Richard McLean, Herve Moulin, Ariel Rubinstein, Rajiv Vohra and Simon Wilkie for their comments. Also, participants in seminars and conferences at Arizona, Bellcore, Brown, Illinois, Northwestern, Princeton, Rochester, Vanderbilt and West Virginia have provided stimulating comments. We also thank the referee for many detailed and useful suggestions. The third author's research was supported in part by NSF grant SES-9213145.     

Behavioural heterogeneity in wine investments

We introduce a heterogeneous agent model to explain the dynamics of fine wine investments. Our results show evidence of the existence of both fundamentalists – those who trade on mean-reversion towards a fair value – and chartists – those who extrapolate recently observed price trends – in the wine market. Moreover, we document that market participants switch between the two trading strategies, allocating more weight to the strategy that has been the most accurate in forecasting wine index values in the recent past. This switching behaviour can explain the large variations in index values (bubbles and crashes) that are observed in the fine wine market.     

The Facts About Small Business and the Real Values of Its 'Life World': A Social Philosophical Interpretation of This Sector of the Modem Economy

Abstract . According to a line of European social philosophers from Marx to Habermas, the development of society is characterized by a process of rationalization, accompanied by alienation and objectification of labor and human relations, and more generally a degradation of what Jürgen Habermashas called the person's “life world.” But the facts about small and medium sized business, as disclosed by empirical investigation, offer a different picture, one of small and medium size enterprises (SME) with a number of attributes associated with social organization on a small scale, of e.g., personality and independence. These can provide a counterweight to its disadvantages and limitations and therefore can be seen as values from a social philosophical point of view. Economically the same attributes make SME vulnerable to the market power and competition of big business. The new technology offers threats to SME, but also opportunities.     

Beyond the Business Case for Diversity in Organizations

Many organizations and institutions are spending extensive time, money, and resources to justify a focus on diversity. In this paper, we argue that, instead of justifying demographic diversity, the more appropriate focus is on properly managing the processes and outcomes of a diverse workforce. Demographic diversity in the workplace is a reality. In terms of both composition and sheer numbers, the workforce today is more demographically diverse than it has ever been, and there is every indication that it will be even more diverse in the future. Accordingly, this paper argues that we must go beyond the business case for diversity to effectively utilize the diversity that already exists and create a just workplace.     

Inconspicuousness and obfuscation: how large shareholders dynamically manipulate output and information for trading purposes

I model a large shareholder who can affect firm fundamentals. I demonstrate that the large shareholder amplifies the component of his private information that is unforecastable by uninformed traders and thus alters the fundamental value of the firm to facilitate his trading profits: he obfuscates. I then construct a continuous time dynamic version of the model using Fourier transform methods. In the dynamic model, the large shareholder does not just simply amplify the unforecastable part of the fundamental: he also alters its stochastic structure. The model thus marries market microstructure with real resource allocation. There are two consequences: (i) the large shareholder induces the fundamental value of the firm to more closely mimic the noise traders, and (ii) market liquidity is reduced.     

The use of modeling tools for policy in evolutionary environments

This is a position paper on the possibilities of informing the (economic and environmental) policy debate by using quantitative evolutionary models. I argue that an evolutionary worldview implies that the existing quantitative modeling tools used for policy analysis are problematic. Then I summarize the main elements of an evolutionary way of analysis, and the way in which it can be incorporated into quantitative models. I conclude with an outline of a proposal for how to apply the ideas in the analysis of energy transitions.     

Structural Decomposition Techniques: Sense and Sensitivity

Structural decomposition techniques are widely used to break down the growth in some variable into the changes in its determinants. In this paper, we discuss the problems caused by the existence of a multitude of equivalent decomposition forms which are used to measure the contribution of a specific determinant. Although it is well known that structural decompositions are not unique, the extent of the problem and its consequences seem to have been largely neglected. In an empirical analysis for The Netherlands between 1986 and 1992, results are calculated for 24 equivalent decomposition forms. The outcomes exhibit a large degree of variability across the different forms. We also examine the two approaches that have been used predominantly in the literature. The average of the two so-called polar decompositions appears to be remarkably close to the average of the full set of 24 decompositions. The approximate decomposition with mid-point weights appears to be almost exact. Although this last alternative might seem a solution to the problem of the marked sensitivity, in fact, it only conceals the problem.     

Religiosity and Moral Identity: The Mediating Role of Self-Control

The ethics literature has identified moral motivation as a factor in ethical decision-making. Furthermore, moral identity has been identified as a source of moral motivation. In the current study, we examine religiosity as an antecedent to moral identity and examine the mediating role of self-control in this relationship. We find that intrinsic and extrinsic dimensions of religiosity have different direct and indirect effects on the internalization and symbolization dimensions of moral identity. Specifically, intrinsic religiosity plays a role in counterbalancing the negative impact of extrinsic religiosity on the internalization of moral identity. Further, intrinsic religiosity also counterbalances the negative and indirect impact of extrinsic religiosity on symbolization of moral identity via self-control. Lastly, self-control does not play a mediating role in the impact of religiosity on the internalization dimension of moral identity. We conclude that this study presents important findings that advance our understanding of the antecedents of moral identity, and that these results may have implications for the understanding of ethical decision-making.