This paper examines optimal social linkage when each individual's repeated interaction with each of his neighbors creates spillovers. Each individual's discount factor is randomly determined. A planner chooses a local interaction network or neighborhood design before the discount factors are...

We ask whether communication can directly substitute for memory in dynastic repeated games in which short lived individuals care about the utility of their offspring who replace them in an infinitely repeated game. Each individual is unable to observe what happens before his entry in the game....

This paper studies the role of memory and communication in games between ongoing organizations. In each organization, each individual, upon entry into the game, replaces his predecessor who has the same preferences and faces the same strategic possibilities. Entry across distinct organizations...

This paper characterizes the asymptotic behavior of an ongoing society facing a repeated coordination problem. This society has a certain demographic structure: generations of individuals asynchronously supercede their "parents," creating an entry/exit process that allows individuals with...

This paper examines the mechanics of intertemporal information provision in dynastic governments. It has been suggested that "horizontal accountability," i.e., a system of governance where auditing functions lie outside the executive branch, can ensure credible disclosure of information. The...

We present a model of coalitional property rights (CPR) regimes ? regimes in which ownership of a good is attributable to coalitions of various sizes. Specifically, for each good, we define a legal structure that specifies the legal coalitions of individuals that share a communal claim to that...

An economy with a nonempty core may plausibly be regarded as socially stable since there exists allocations against which no group in the economy wishes to "contract out". Aside from classical economies, it is not generally known what are the primitives of an economy that give rise to a nonempty...

When are political institutions stable? When do they tend toward reform? This paper examines a model of dynamic, endogenous institutional change. We introduce the class of dynamic political games (DPGs), dynamic games in which the political aggregation rules used at date t+1 are chosen by the...

The standard model of repeated games assumes perfect synchronization in the timing of decisions between the players. In many natural settings, however, choices are made synchronously so that only one player can move at a given time. This paper studies a family of repeated settings in which...

This paper examines the issue of multiplicity of equilibria in alternating move repeated games with two players. Such games are canonical models of environments with repeated, asynchronous choices due to inertia or replacement. We focus our attention on Markov Perfect equilibria (MPE). These are...