This is a contribution to the growing experimental literature on how trial-and-error adjustment processes can establish a convention for coordination on an equilibrium in a game. A simple bargaining game introduced by Nash is used for this purpose. Subjects are conditioned in different...

Decision theory can be used to test the logic of decision making - one may ask whether a given set of decisions can be justified by a decision-theoretic model. Indeed, in principal-agent settings, such justifications may be required - a manager of an investment fund may be asked what beliefs she...

Psychologists report that people make choices on the basis of "decision utilities'' that routinely overestimate the "experienced utility'' consequences of these choices. This paper argues that this dichotomy between decision and experienced utilities may be the solution to an evolutionary design...

We examine an Outside Option Game in which player I submits a claim for a share of a cake while player II simultaneously either makes a claim or chooses to opt out. If player II opts out, then she receives an opt-out payment while player I receives nothing. If player II opts in and if the claims...

In his work on market signaling, Spence proposed a dynamic model of a signaling market in which a buyer revises prices in light of experience and sellers choose utility-maximizing signals given these prices. Spence also suggested that subjecting the dynamic process to rare perturbations might...

This paper develops an approach to equilibrium selection in game theory based on studying the equilibriating process through which equilibrium is achieved. The differential equations derived from models of interactive learning typically have stationary states that are not isolated. Instead, Nash...

We use the theory of abstract convexity to study adverse-selection principal-agent problems and two-sided matching problems, departing from much of the literature by not requiring quasilinear utility. We formulate and characterize a basic underlying implementation duality. We show how this...