Two players seek to co-ordinate their behavior in an incomplete information setting. We show that if each player's preferences over his opponent's action is independent of his own action or type, then cheap talk cannot expand the set of equilibrium outcomes.

We study whether the Coase conjecture holds in a model of bargaining during conflict due to Powell and Fearon. Two players, A and B, contest a divisible resource. At any time during the conflict, they can make a binding agreement to share the resource. The conflict continues until they make an...

In many scenarios, a protagonist tries to compel a political leader (the antagonist) to cooperate. The protagonist can impose targeted measures (e.g., "smart" sanctions) that hurt the antagonist directly, and comprehensive measures (e.g., trade embargoes) aimed at provoking a popular uprising...

In the bilateral hold-up model and the moral hazard in teams model, introducing a third party allows implementation of the first-best outcome, even if the agents can renegotiate inefficient outcomes and collude. Fines paid to the third party provide incentives for truth-telling and first-best...