We develop a vertical differentiation game-theoretic model that addresses the issue of designing free software samples for attaining follow-on sales. When software samples are akin to durable goods, a Monopolist giving a free sample away is likely to engender the cannibalization of sales of its...

In a series of papers, Aumann and Roth discussed a game in which players can cooperate in pairs and two of them prefer to form a coalition with each other. Roth argued that the only rational outcome is that the players who prefer each other form a coalition; Aumann argued that all three...

This paper describes a parametric family of utility functions for decision analysis. The parameterization is obtained by embedding the HARA class in a four-parameter representation for the risk aversion function. The resulting utility functions have only four shapes: concave, convex, S-shaped,...

Social interactions provide a set of incentives for regulating individual behavior. Chief among these is stigma, the status loss and discrimination that results from the display of stigmatized attributes or behaviors. The stigmatization of behavior is the enforcement mechanism behind social...

We characterize the core many-to-one matchings as fixed points of a map. Our characterization gives an algorithm for finding core allocations; the algorithm is efficient and simple to implement. Our characterization does not require substitutable preferences, so it is separate from the structure...

This paper investigates algorithmic computability of simple games (voting games). It shows that (i) games with a finite carrier are computable, (ii) computable games have both finite winning coalitions and cofinite losing coalitions, and (iii) computable games violate any conceivable notion of...

We define social institutions as strategies in some repeated game. With this interpretation in mind, we consider the impact of introducing requirements on strategies which have been viewed as necessary properties for any social institution to endure. The properties we study are finite...

In this paper, we consider the problem of choosing a set of multi-party contracts, where each coalition of agents has a non-empty finite set of feasible contracts to choose from. We call such problems, cntract choic problems. We provide conditions under which a contract choice problem has a...

Two players play an unknown zero-sum repeated game. Before the game starts one player may receive signals, whose nature is specified by an information structure, regarding the game actually played. We characterize when one information structure is better for the maximizer than another. We also...

This paper contributes to the literature on second-price auctions with resale. We add speculators---bidders with value zero---to the standard symmetric independent private values environment. There always exists a continuum of inefficient equilibria that are profitable for a speculator. With no...