MULTIPLE OBJECTIVES IN ACCOUNTING AND FINANCE

This paper fnst discusses the results of previous empirical and theoretical work relating to multiple objectives. It then reports on a survey carried out in 1978 by means of a questionnaire circulated to the top 500 companies. The paper finds that despite strong evidence of multiple objectives, the profit motive is dominant, although there is evidence of growth as a significant objective.
Proxy goals for a single primary objective function are found to be present, particularly in relation to risk. Finally, the implications of these results for accounting and finance are discussed.     

CREDIBILITY AND STRATEGIC LEARNING IN NETWORKS

We analyze a model of diffusion in a fixed, finite connected network. There is an interested party that knows the quality of the product being propagated and chooses an implant in the network to influence other agents to buy. Agents are either “innovators,” who adopt immediately, or rational. Rational consumers buy if buying instead of waiting maximizes expected utility. We consider the conditions on the network under which optimal diffusion of the good product with probability 1 is a perfect Bayes equilibrium.     

Purification in the infinitely-repeated prisoners' dilemma

This paper investigates the Harsanyi [Harsanyi, J.C., 1973. Games with randomly disturbed payoffs: A new rationale for mixed-strategy equilibrium points. International Journal of Game Theory 2 (1), 1–23]-purifiability of mixed strategies in the repeated prisoners' dilemma with perfect monitoring. We perturb the game so that in each period, a player receives a private payoff shock which is independently and identically distributed across players and periods. We focus on the purifiability of one-period memory mixed strategy equilibria used by Ely and Välimäki [Ely, J.C., Välimäki, J., 2002. A robust folk theorem for the prisoner's dilemma. Journal of Economic Theory 102 (1), 84–105] in their study of the repeated prisoners' dilemma with private monitoring. We find that any such strategy profile is not the limit of one-period memory equilibrium strategy profiles of the perturbed game, for almost all noise distributions. However, if we allow infinite memory strategies in the perturbed game, then any completely-mixed equilibrium is purifiable.     

Strategy-proof club formation with indivisible club facilities

Review of Economic Design - We investigate the strategy-proof provision and financing of indivisible club good facilities when individuals are subject to congestion costs that are non-decreasing in...