We study the emergence of norms of cooperation in experimental economies populated by strangers interacting indefinitely and lacking formal enforcement institutions. In all treatments the efficient outcome is sustainable as an equilibrium. We address the following questions: can these economies...

Social norms of cooperation are studied under several forms of communication. In an experiment, strangers could make public statements before playing a prisoner’s dilemma. The interaction was repeated indefinitely, which generated multiple equilibria. Communication could be used as a tool to...

A new behavioral foundation is uncovered for why money promotes impersonal exchange. In an experiment, subjects could cooperate by intertemporally exchanging goods with anonymous opponents met at random. Indefinite repetition supported multiple equilibria, from full defection to the efficient...

We study cooperation in four-person economies of indefinite duration. Subjects interact anonymously playing a prisoner’s dilemma. We identify and characterize the strategies employed at the aggregate and at the individual level. We find that (i) grim trigger well describes aggregate play, but...

This work introduces a rigorous set-theoretic foundation of bilateral matching mechanisms and studies their properties in a systematic manner. By providing a unified framework to study bilateral matching mechanisms, we formalize how different spatial/informational constraints can be implemented...

We present a new proof of the interiority of the policy function based on the Inada conditions. It is based on supporting properties of concave functions.

In this study we offer a new approach to proving the differentiability of the value function, which complements and extends the literature on dynamic programming. This result is then applied to the analysis of equilibrium in the recent class of monetary economies developed in [13]. For this type...

I illustrate a search theoretic environment that allows endogenous determination of number of trade facilitators and markup charged on mediated sales. Developed around Kiyotaki and Wright's (1989) exchange economy, the study relaxes the assumptions of exogenous prices and distribution of agents...

Using a search-theoretic model where education's productive role is endogenous, we study the theoretical ramifications of separating human capital accumulation from educational investment decisions.

We study the endogenous determination of the trading mechanism in a search economy with a continuum of homogenous sellers and heterogeneous buyers.