The article shows how Jean-Francois Mertens contributed to the development of game theory and microeconomics as we know them today. Along with about 80 articles, Mertens's topics go from the formulation of Bayesian decision making in games with incomplete information to the foundations of cost...

We are given a list of tasks Z and a population divided into several groups X j of equal size. Performing one task z requires constituting a team with exactly one member x j from every group. There is a cost (or reward) for participation: if type x j chooses task z, he receives p j (z);...

Within the context of strategic interaction, we provide a unified framework for analyzing information, knowledge, and the "stable" pattern of behavior. We first study the related interactive epistemology and, in particular, show an equivalence theorem between a strictly dominated strategy and a...

The Harris-Todaro model is reinterpreted under an evolutionary game approach, including the behavior of migrants under bounded rationality in a process of imitation or learning. A first feature is an improvement upon Harris-Todaro by replacing the sign-preserving function of the adjustment...

We analyze bubbles and crashes in a model in which some investors are partially sophisticated. While the expectations of such investors are endogenously determined in equilibrium, these are based on a coarse understanding of the market dynamics. We highlight how such investors may endogenously...

We solve in closed form the optimal consumption / portfolio choice problem for the class of isoelastic utility functions under incomplete information about the mean return of the stock price. Our approach consists in converting the original investor's problem into an equivalent program where the...

Many people are fired from their jobs for poor performance. However, it is difficult to distinguish whether they are fired because they are not well suited for their job (sorting explanation) or because the firms are trying to provide incentives for effort (incentive explanation). This paper...

The paper studies a learning model in which information about a worker's ability can be acquired symmetrically by the worker and a firm in any period by observing the worker's performance on a given task. Productivity at different tasks is assumed to be differentially sensitive to a worker's...

We extend the persuasion game to bring it squarely into the economics of advertising. We model advertising as exciting consumer interest into learning more about the product, and determine a firm's equilibrium choice of advertising content over quality information, price information, and...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore why digital games based learning (DGBL) is spreading rapidly in all educational settings, when the literature does not provide clear empirical evidence of the pedagogical benefits. The paper seeks to understand why DGBL is constantly developing...