This paper examines the usefulness of Kalai (2020)'s measure of the viability of Nash equilibrium. We experimentally study a class of participation games, which differ in the number of players, the success threshold, and the payoff to not participating. We find that Kalai's measure captures well...

Tipping of a natural system, entailing a loss of ecosystem services, may be prevented by stable partial cooperation. The presence of tipping points reverses the grim story that a high level of cooperation is hard to achieve and leaves large possible gains of cooperation. We investigate a tipping...

Maintaining the security of critical infrastructure networks is vital for a modern economy. This paper examines a game-theoretic model of attack and defense of a network in which the defender's objective is to maintain network connectivity and the attacker's objective is to destroy a set of...

Theoretical and experimental studies of noncooperative games increasingly recognize Nash equilibrium as a limiting outcome of players repeated interaction. This note, while sharing that view, illustrates and advocates combined use of convex optimization and differential equations, the purpose...

In repeated normal-form (simultaneous-move) games, simple penal codes (Abreu, 1986, 1988) permit an elegant characterization of the set of subgame-perfect outcomes. We show that the logic of simple penal codes fails in repeated extensive-form games. By means of examples, we identify two types of...

I characterize the optimal accuracy level r of an unbiased Tullock contest between two players with heterogeneous prize valuations. The designer maximizes the winning probability of the strong player or the winner’s expected valuation by choosing a contest with an all-pay auction equilibrium...

We examine whether the "Level-k" model of strategic behavior generates reliable cross-game predictions within an individual. We find no correlation in subjects' estimated levels of reasoning across two families of games. Furthermore, estimating a higher level for Ann than Bob in one family of...

We augment the standard cartel formation game from non-cooperative coalition theory, often applied in the context of international environmental agreements on climate change, with the possibility that singletons support coalition formation without becoming coalition members themselves. Rather,...

Altruists and envious people who meet in contests are symbionts. They do better than a population of narrowly rational individuals. If there are only altruists and envious individuals, a particular mixture of altruists and envious individuals is evolutionarily stable.

We investigate whether there is a link between conditional cooperation and betrayal aversion. We use a public goods game to classify subjects by type of contribution preference and by belief about the contributions of others; and we measure betrayal aversion for different categories of subject....