A country with a surplus river basin cooperates with a country with a deficit river basin in a joint investment project to build a water canal. The benefits from the existence of the canal are realized when cooperation halts and countries will have the opportunity to engage in a non-cooperative water market game. We define an imputation distribution procedure to share the “burden” from cooperat...

Extending Barro (1999) and Luttmer & Mariotti (2003), we introduce a new model of time preferences: the instantaneous-gratification model. This model applies tractably to a much wider range of settings than existing models. It applies to complete and incomplete-market settings and it works with generic utility functions. It works in settings with linear policy rules and in settings in which equ...

Probability matching occurs when an action is chosen with a frequency equivalent to the probability of that action being the best choice. This sub-optimal behavior has been reported repeatedly by psychologist and experimental economist. We provide an evolutionary foundation for this phenomenon by showing that learning by reinforcement can lead to probability matching and, if learning occurs suf...

The rise in online social networking has brought about a revolution in social relations. However, its effects on offline interactions and its implications for collective well-being are still not clear and are under-investigated. We study the ecology of online and offline interaction in an evolutionary game framework where individuals can adopt different strategies of socialization. Our main res...

I explore alternative central bank policies for liquidity provision in a model of payments. I use a mechanism design approach so that agents’ incentives to default are explicit and contingent on the credit policy designed. In the first policy, the central bank invests in costly enforcement and charges an interest rate to recover costs. I show that the second-best solution is not distortionary. ...

I consider a standard implementation problem under complete information when agents have a minimal degree of honesty. In particular, I assume that agents are white lie averse: they strictly prefer to tell the truth whenever lying has no eect on their material payo. I show that if there are at least five agents who are all white lie averse and if I impose either of two refinements of Nash equi...

We extend a well known differential oligopoly game to encompass the possibility for production to generate a negative environmental externality, regulated through Pigouvian taxation and price caps. We show that, if the price cap is set so as to fix the tolerable maximum amount of emissions, the resulting equilibrium investment in green R&D is indeed concave in the structure of the industry. Our...

We modify the dynamic pivot mechanism of Bergemann and Välimäki (Econometrica, 2010) in such a way that lump-sum fees are collected from the players. We show that the modified mechanism satisfies ex-ante budget balance as well as ex-post efficiency, periodic ex-post incentive compatibility, and periodic ex-post individual rationality, as long as the Markov chain representing the evolution of pl...

We analyze a sequential decision model with one-sided commitment in which decision makers are allowed to choose the time of acting (exercising a risky investment option A) or waiting. We characterize information cascade under endogenous ordering and show that with endogenous ordering, if the number of decision makers is large and decision makers are patient enough, at any fixed time, nearly all...

This paper examines optimal factor taxation when output is produced from labour and capital and some (or all) households save capital. It is shown that there is a reputational equilibrium in which the government has no incentive to change its announced tax policies. In this equilibrium, the Judd-Chamley assertion that the tax on capital income tends to zero in the limit holds. This is independe...