a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t JEL classification: C72 C79 D40 D43 D44 Keywords: Algorithmic mechanism design Worst case scenario equilibrium analysis Frugality Minimum cost spanning tree problem Price of imperfect competition A buyer procures a network to span a given set of nodes; each seller bids to supply certain edges, then the buyer purchases a minimal cost spanning tree. An effici...

We find an economic rationale for the common sense answer to the question in our title — courts should not always enforce what the contracting parties write. We describe and analyze a contractual environment that allows a role for an active court. An active court can improve on the outcome that the parties would achieve without it. The institutional role of the court is to maximize the parties’...

This paper studies the bilateral contracting environment where multiple principals negotiate contracts with multiple agents independently. It is shown that equilibrium allocations associated with (pure strategy) perfect Bayesian equilibria relative to any ad hoc set of negotiation schemes can be supported by pure strategy perfect Bayesian equilibria relative to the set of menus. It is also show...

We build a simple model of trust as an equilibrium phenomenon, departing from standard “selfish” preferences in a minimal way. Agents who are on the receiving end of an offer to transact can choose whether to cheat and take away the entire surplus, taking into account a “cost of cheating.” The latter has an idiosyncratic component (an agent’s type), and a socially determined one. The smaller th...

introduction: raman spectroscopy, that is a spectroscopic technique based on inelastic scattering of monochromatic light, can provide valuable information about molecular vibrations, so using this technique we can study molecular changes in a sample. material and methods: in this research, 153 raman spectra obtained from normal and dried skin samples. baseline and electrical noise were eliminat...

We investigate the computational structure of the biological kinship assignment problem by abstracting away all biological details that are irrelevant to computation. The computational structure depends on phenotype space, which we formally define. We illustrate this approach by exhibiting an approximation algorithm for kinship assignment in the case of the Simpson index with a priori error bou...

Traditional game theoretic analysis often proposes the application of backwardinduction and subgame-perfection as models of rational behavior in games with perfect information. However, there are many situations in which such application leads to counterintuitive results, casting doubts on the predictive power of the theory itself. The Centipede Game, firstly introduced by Rosenthal (1981), rep...

We find an economic rationale for the common sense answer to the question in our title — courts should not always enforce what the contracting parties write. We describe and analyze a contractual environment that allows a role for an active court. An active court can improve on the outcome that the parties would achieve without it. The institutional role of the court is to maximize the parties’...

The introduction of a small amount of bounded rationality into a model sometimes has little effect, and sometimes has a dramatic impact on predicted behavior. We call a model robust to bounded rationality if small deviations from rationality result only in small changes in the equilibrium set. We also say that a model is structurally stable if the equilibrium set (given fully rational agents) v...

Casual observation reveals that groups of people interact on many levels simultaneously. Examples include political party formation and interaction; the interaction of Sunnis, Shias and Kurds in the Government of Iraq; and labor union and confederation formation. In this paper, a model of hierarchical group structures is developed. The model generalizes the existing coalitional theory in severa...