We test the hypothesis that smiles perceived as honest serve as a signal that has evolved to induce cooperation in situations requiring mutual trust. Potential trustees (84 participants from Toulouse, France) made two video clips averaging around 15 seconds for viewing by potential senders...

We show that essentially every communication equilibrium of any finite Bayesian game with two players can be implemented as a strategic form correlated equilibrium of an extended game, in which before choosing actions as in the Bayesian game, the players engage in a possibly fin nitely long (but...

Our aim is to merge the traditional literature on the determinant of success of special interests with the new political economy of international union. We create a political economy model of allocation of public spending among different interests. We apply it to an environment of International...

The article shows how Jean-Francois Mertens contributed to the development of game theory and microeconomics as we know them today. Along with about 80 articles, Mertens's topics go from the formulation of Bayesian decision making in games with incomplete information to the foundations of cost...

How can governments reap the potential benefits of public-private partnerships (PPPs) in the provision of infrastructure? Private sector involvement in the provision of public goods is long-standing, often relying on franchises or concessions. More recently, PPPs have risen in prominence,...

This paper assesses the impact of migrants' Home Town Associations (HTAs) located in France on the provision of local public goods in Mali. To this end, we computed a dataset on all the HTAs that have been created by Malian migrants in France since 1981 and geo-localised their interventions on...

This paper proposes an analytical framework for assessing policies that will contribute to a better integration of environmental externalities in the pursuit of economic efficiency and growth objectives. The framework consists of two parts. The first part lays out principles and criteria for the...