This paper presents a simple framework that allows us to survey and relate some different strands of the game theory literature. We describe a "canonical" way of adding incomplete information to a complete information game. This framework allows us to give a simple "complete theory"...

We study the dynamic Ramsey problem of finding optimal public debt and linear taxes on capital and labor income within a tractable infinite horizon model with incomplete markets. With zero public expenditure and debt, it is optimal to tax the risky labor income and subsidize capital, while a...

We confront two common objections to Harsanyi's impartial observer theorem; one to do with 'fairness', and the other to do with different individuals' having different attitudes toward risk. Both these objections can be accommodated if we drop the reduction axiom; in particular, if we...

When individuals' labor and capital income are subject to uninsurable idiosyncratic risks, should capital and labor be taxed, and if so, how? In a two-period general equilibrium model with production, we derive a decomposition formula of the welfare effects of these taxes into insurance and...

We consider an economy where individuals face uninsurable risks to their human capital accumulation and study the problem of determining the optimal level of linear taxes on capital and labor income together with the optimal path of the debt level. We show both analytically and numerically that...

We de.ne and analyze a strategic topology on types in the Harsanyi-Mertens-Zamir universal type space, where two types are close if their strategic behavior is similar in all strategic situations. For a .xed game and action de.ne the distance be-tween a pair of types as the diþerence between...

What are the welfare effects of enhanced disclosures of public information - Is it always the case, that frequent and timely publication of economic statistics by government agencies and the central bank are desirable - This question has become one of several interlinked strands of debate on the...

We investigate the relationship between obesity and life expectancy, and whether or not this relationship varies by socioeconomic status (SES). The underlying model is based on the "Pathways to health" framework in which SES affects health by modifying the relationship between lifestyles and...

An informed advisor wishes to convey her valuable information to an uninformed decision maker with identical preferences. Thus she has a current incentive to truthfully reveal her information. But if the decision maker thinks the advisor might be biased in favor of one decision, and the advisor...