Population games are stochastic processes which explicitly model Nash's (1950) mass action interpretation of Nash equilibrium. The mass action interpretation envisions a population of players for each position in the game, and that players are randomly matched for play. The hope is that the...

The standard ad hoc monetary objective function creates a bias in favor of inflation targeting. Instead, this paper uses the Pareto criterion to assess inflation targeting (IT), price-level targeting (PLT), and nominal-income targeting (NIT). The effect that unanticipated inflation or deflation...

In a pure-exchange economy involving one perishable consumption good and risk-averse consumers, the elasticity of a consumer’s Pareto-efficient consumption with respect to aggregate output equals the reciprocal of the ratio of the consumer’s coefficient of relative risk aversion to average...

We study the optimal provision of public goods in the context of a special class of altruistically linked utility functions. We show that the usual Samuelson condition holds as if the utility functions were independent.

The paper focuses on efficiency under monopoly. Contrary to common wisdom, nine examples given in the paper show that a Pareto-efficient output in monopoly is possible under both linear and nonlinear pricing. Pareto efficiency can be achieved when consumers are homogeneous as well as...

We analyze nonlinear pricing problem under monopoly using two hidden types of agents with linear demands and fully characterize all possible optimal solutions for both ordered and non-ordered demands. We show that both optimal packages can either contain Pareto-efficient quantities or one...

The paper provides a theory of interest rates determination in the informal credit market in backward agriculture highlighting the interactions between two informal sector lenders (a professional moneylender and a trader-interlocker) and explains the prevalence of different interest rates in the...

This paper builds a model of fragmented duopsony in backward agriculture following Basu and Bell (1991) in which the purchasers (traders) have captive markets each but compete in a contested market. We focus on the formation of captive markets through trader-farmer interlinkage in the form of...

The paper provides a theory of interest rates determination in the informal credit market in backward agriculture highlighting the interactions between two informal sector lenders (a professional moneylender and a trader-interlocker) and explains the prevalence of different interest rates in the...

The central concept of noncooperative game theory is that of the \emph{strategic equilibrium} (or Nash equilibrium, or noncooperative equilibrium). In this chapter we discuss some of the conceptual issues surrounding this concept and its refinements. Many of these issues have received increasing...