It is well known that the rock-paper-scissors game has no pure saddle point. We show that this holds more generally: A symmetric two-player zero-sum game has a pure saddle point if and only if it is not a generalized rock-paper-scissors game. Moreover, we show that every finite symmetric...

We show that for many classes of symmetric two-player games, the simple decision rule "imitate-the-best" can hardly be beaten by any other decision rule. We provide necessary and sufficient conditions for imitation to be unbeatable and show that it can only be beaten by much in games that are of...

While reviewing "Game Theory and the Law" by Douglas Baird, Robert Gertner, and Randal Picker, this essay provides a self-contained, layman's introduction to modern noncooperative game theory

While reviewing "Game Theory and the Law" by Baird, Gertner and Picker, the essay provides a self-contained, nontechnical introduction to modern noncooperative game theory.

Israel’s policies regarding Lebanon have been dependent on public opinion, which is very volatile. The citizens of Israel did not favor the occupation of the security zone in South Lebanon because of the Four Mothers movement, and it influenced the government to withdraw military forces...

In an experiment using two-bidder first-price sealed bid auctions with symmetric independent private values, we collected information on the female participants' menstrual cycles. We find that women bid significantly higher than men in their menstrual and premenstrual phase but do not bid...

In an experiment using two-bidder first-price sealed bid auctions with symmetric independent private values, we scan also the right hand of each subject. We study how the ratio of the length of the index and ring fingers (2D:4D) of the right hand, a measure of prenatal hormone exposure, is...

We study the relationship between the cognitive load manipulation and strategic sophistication. The cognitive load manipulation is designed to reduce the subject's cognitive resources which are available for deliberation on a choice. In our experiment, subjects are placed under a large cognitive...

In this paper we study a multi-stage elimination contest with non-sunk bids: differently from existing literature, we realize that when players are budget-constrained, they do not regard past bids as strategically irrelevant in their decision of how much to bid in following stages. This happens...

This note examines how the second chance, when provided to a disadvantaged player, can resolve the prisoner’s dilemma.