Forthcoming in Economic Theory

Formalizing Informal Institutions: Theory and Evidence From A Kenyan Slum∗ (Forthcoming in Institutions and Economic Growth, Elhanan Helpman (editor), Harvard University Press)

Economics of Natural Disasters: A Critical Review

Significant progress has been made in recent years for modeling spatial economic impacts of disasters in a regional context (for example, Okuyama and Chang eds. Modeling the Spatial Economic Impacts of Disasters, forthcoming). While these advancements are more toward modeling strategies based on conventional frameworks, little has been dealt with the theory on economics of disasters, since the ...

Forthcoming in Theoretical Economics. GENERAL REVEALED PREFERENCE THEORY

We generalize the standard revealed-preference exercise in economics, and prove a sufficient condition under which the revealed-preference formulation of an economic theory has universal implications, and when these implications can be recursively enumerated. We apply our theorem to two theories of group behavior: the theory of group preference and of Nash equilibrium.

Strong Belief and Weak Assumption

Battigalli and Siniscalchi’s [Journal of Economic Theory 106, 356-391 (2002)] notion of “strong belief”in conditional probability systems and Yang’s [Journal of Economic Theory, forthcoming] notion of “weak assumption”in lexicographic probability systems are unified by the same requirements on preferences. Our analysis, hence, reconciles the tension between Battigalli and Siniscalchi’s characte...

Amalgamating players, symmetry, and the Banzhaf value

We suggest new characterizations of the Banzhaf value without the symmetry axiom, which reveal that the characterizations by Lehrer (1988, International Journal of Game Theory 17, 89–99) and Nowak (1997, International Journal of Game Theory 26, 127–141) as well as most of the characterizations by Casajus (2010, Theory and Decision, forthcoming) are redundant. Further, we explore symmetry implic...

Forthcoming in Contemporary Economic Development Reviewed Volume The Enterprise and its Environment edited by Murat Sertel London MacMillan Press Ltd Decentralized Information Processing in the Theory of Organizations

Bounded rationality has been an important theme throughout the history of the theory of organizations because it explains the sharing of information processing tasks and the existence of administrative sta s that coordinate large organizations This article broadly surveys the theories of organizations that model such bounded rationality and decentralized information processing