The theory of learning in games explores how, which, and what kind of equilibria might arise as a consequence of a long-run nonequilibrium process of learning, adaptation, and/or imitation. If agents’ strategies are completely observed at the end of each round (and agents are randomly matched...

Private military and security companies (PMSCs) have been gaining increasing media and scholarly attention particularly due to their indispensable role in the wars in Afghanistan 2001 and Iraq 2003. Nevertheless, theoretical insights into the agency problems inherent when hiring PMSCs and how to...

Many markets without repeated seller–buyer relations feature third-party “monitors” that sell recommendations. We analyze the profit-maximizing recommendation policies of such monitors. In an infinitely repeated game with seller moral hazard and short-lived consumers, a monopolistic...

In the paper, the concept of Walrasian sequential equilibrium is developed to formalize the notions of fundamental social and endogenous uncertainties and decentralized social learning. It predicts that social sequential experiments with efficient as well as inefficient network patterns of...

We consider a long-lived firm that faces an infinite sequence of finitely-lived consumers. In each period, the firm can exert either high or low effort, which is the firm's private information. When consumers learn about the firm's talent from the outcomes of previous transactions, there exists...

We analyze the legal reform concerning employees' inventions in Germany. Using a simple principal-agent model, we derive a unique efficient payment scheme: a bonus which is contingent on the project value. We demonstrate that the old German law creates inefficient incentives. However, the new...

This paper studies a model of memory. The model takes into account that memory capacity is limited and imperfect. We study how agents with such memory limitations, who have very little information about their choice environment, play games. We introduce the notion of a Limited Memory Equilibrium...

Does improving creditor coordination by strengthening CACs lead to efficiency gains in the functioning of sovereign bond markets? We address this question in a model featuring both debtor moral hazard and creditor coordination under incomplete information. Conditional on default, we characterize...

We study a combinatorial variant of the classical principal-agent model. In our setting a principal wishes to incentivize a team of strategic agents to exert costly effort on his behalf. Agentsʼ actions are hidden and the principal observes only the outcome of the team, which depends...

We study the effects of reputation and competition in a trust game. If trustees are anonymous, outcomes are poor: trustees are not trustworthy, and trustors do not trust. If trustees are identifiable and can, hence, build a reputation, efficiency quadruples but is still at only a third of the...