This paper considers the effects of changes in the income distribution in an economy where agents’ utility depends both on consumption and on their rank in the distribution of consumption of a positional good. We introduce a new methodology to compare the behavior of agents that occupy the...

A new method is proposed for the analysis of first price and all pay auctions, where bidding functions are written not as functions of values but as functions of the rank or quantile of the bidder’s value in the distribution from which it was drawn. This method gives new results in both...

In many markets it is possible to find rival sellers charging different prices for the same good. Earlier research has attempted to explain this phenomenon by demonstrating the existence of dispersed price equilibria when consumers must make use of costly search to discover prices. We ask...

This paper considers the effect of inequality when there are concerns for status. We analyse the effects of linear redistributive taxes in an economy where agents’ utility depends both on consumption and on their rank in the distribution of consumption of a positional good. This increase in...

We investigate games whose Nash equilibria are mixed and are unstable under fictitious play-like learning processes. We show that when players learn using weighted stochastic fictitious play and so place greater weight on more recent experience that the time average of play often converges in...

The human tendency to cooperate with nonkin even in short-run relationships remains a puzzle. Recently it has been hypothesized that altruism may be a byproduct of “mentalizing”, the process of understanding and predicting the mental states of others. Another idea is based on sexual...

Society often allocates valuable resources - such as prestigious positions, salaries, or marriage partners - via tournament-like institutions. In such situations, inequality affects incentives to compete and hence has a direct effect on equilibrium choices and hence material outcomes. We...

Monotone ratio orderings are refinements of first order stochastic dominance that allow monotone comparative statics results in games of incomplete information. We develop analogous refinements for second order stochastic dominance based on the monotonicity of the cumulative probability ratio...

Reinforcement learning and stochastic fictitious play are apparent rivals as models of human learning. They embody quite different assumptions about the processing of information and optimisation. This paper compares their properties and finds that they are far more similar than was thought. In...

Reinforcement learning and stochastic fictitious play are apparent rivals as models of human learning. The embody quite different assumptions about the processing of information and optimisation. This paper compares their properties and finds that they are far more similar than were thought. In...