Political party formation and coalition building in the European Parliament is being a driving force for making governance of the highly pluralistic European Union relatively effective and consensual. In spite of successive enlargements and the very high number of electoral parties obtaining...

This paper deals with changes in managerial practices in Catalonia in an age of nascent capitalism (1830-1925) and adaptive family strategies in order to face the absence of state welfare. During the 19 t h Century and in the absence of recorded labor contracts, human resources of the firm were...

This paper explores the relationships between noncooperative bargaining games and the consistent value for non-transferable utility (NTU) cooperative games. A dynamic approach to the consistent value for NTU games is introduced: the consistent vector field. The main contribution of the paper is...

We characterize the prekernel of NTU games by means of consistency, converse consistency, and five axioms of the Nash type on bilateral problems. The intersection of the prekernel and the core is also characterized with the same axioms over the class of games where the core is nonempty.

The mechanisms in the Nash program for cooperative games are made compatible with the framework of the theory of implementation. This is done through a reinterpretation of the characteristic function that avoids feasibility problems, thereby allowing an analysis that focuses exclusively on the...

Experiments in which subjects play simultaneously several finite prisoner's dilemma supergames with and without an outside option reveal that: (i) subjects use probabilistic start and endeffect behaviour, (ii) the freedom to choose whether to play the prisoner's dilemma game enhances...

We formulate a knowlegde--based model of direct investment through mergers and acquisitions. M&As are realized to create comparative advantages by exploiting international synergies and appropriating local technology spillovers requiring geographical proximity, but can also represent a strategic...

We present a model of conglomeration motivated by technology synergies and strategic reductions in variable costs in the face of competitive pressures. The resulting firm integration is neither horizontal nor vertical but rather congeneric integration of firms in related industries. We...

While markets are often decentralized, in many other cases agents in one role can only negotiate with a proper subset of the agents in the complementary role. There may be proximity issues or restricted communication flows. For example, information may be transmitted only through word-of-mouth,...

This paper theoretically and empirically documents a puzzle that arises when an RBC economy with a job matching function is used to model unemployment. The standard model can generate sufficiently large cyclical fluctuations in unemployment, or a sufficiently small response of unemployment to...