We study a market model in which competing firms use costly marketing devices to influence the set of alternatives which consumers perceive as relevant. Consumers in our model are boundedly rational in the sense that they have an imperfect perception of what is relevant to their decision...

In standard contract-theoretic models, the underlying assumption is that agent types differ in their preference or cost parameters, and the principal's objective is to design contracts in order to screen this type. We study a contract-theoretic model in which the heterogeneity among agent types...

In this paper we investigate the implementation problem arising when some of the players are “faulty” in the sense that they fail to act optimally. The planner and the non-faulty players only know that there can be at most k faulty players in the population. However, they know neither the...

In this paper we investigate the implementation problem arising when some of the players are "faulty" in the sense that they fail to act optimally. The planner and the non-faulty players only know that there can be at most k faulty players in the population. However, they know neither the...

In standard contract-theoretic models, the underlying assumption is that agent types differ in their preference or cost parameters, and the principal's objective is to design contracts in order to screen this type. We study a contract-theoretic model in which the heterogeneity among agent types...

The authors explore a sequential offers model of n-person coalitional bargaining with transferable utility and with time discounting. Their focus is on the efficiency properties of stationary equilibria of strictly superadditive games when the discount factor 'delta' is sufficiently large. It is...

We study cooperative behaviour in communities where the flow of information regarding past conduct is limited or missing. Players are initially randomly matched with no knowledge of each other's past actions; they endogenously decide whether or not to continue the repeated relationship. There is...

When human capital accumulation generates pecuniary externalities across professions, and capital markets are imperfect, persistent inequality "in utility and consumption" is inevitable in "any" steady state. This is true irrespective of the degree of divisibility in investments. However,...

Learning-by-doing and increasing returns are often perceived to have similar implications for market structure and conduct. The authors analyze this in the context of an infinite-horizon, price-setting game. Learning is shown to not reduce the viability of market-sharing collusion between a...

We study informal insurance within communities, explicitly recognizing the possibility that subgroups of individuals may destabilize insurance arrangements among the larger group. We therefore consider self--enforcing risk--sharing agreements that are robust not only to single--person deviations...