In a society composed of a ruler and its citizens: what are the determinants of the political equilibrium between these two? This paper approaches this problem as a game played between a ruler who has to decide the distribution of the aggregate income and a group of agents/citizens who have the...

We present a general model of two players contest with two types of efforts. Contrary to the classical models of contest, where each player chooses a unique effort, and where the outcome depends on the efforts of all the players, contestants are allowed to reduce the effort of the opponent....

This paper models the dynamic process through which a large society may succeed in building up its “social capital” by establishing a stable and dense pattern of interaction among its members. In the model, agents interact according to a collection of infinitely repeated Prisoner’s...

We propose a framework to analyze coalition formation with heterogeneous agents. Existing literature defines stability conditions that do not ensure that, once an agent decides to sign an agreement, the enlarged coalition is feasible. Defining the concepts of refraction and exchanging, we set up...

This paper analyses strategic bargaining in negotiations between non-monolithic players, i.e. agents starting negotiations can split up in smaller entities during the bargaining process. We show that the possibility of scission in the informed coalition implies that it loses its information...

Natural resources are generally associated to negative effects on the political environment of a country. This paper explores the impact that oil revenues have on the establishment of a given political system. Based on previous literature, a political economy perspective is employed. A simple...

We analyse river sharing games in which a set of agents located along a river shares the available water. Using coalition theory, we find that the potential benefits of water trade may not be sufficient to make all agents in the river cooperate and acknowledge property rights as a prerequisite...

This paper aims to explain the rise and fall of communism by exploring the interplay between economic incentives and social preferences in different economic systems. We introduce inequality-averse and inefficiency-averse agents responding to economic incentives and transmitting their ideology...

A model of coalition government formation is presented in which inefficient, non-minimal winning coalitions may form in Nash equilibrium. Predictions for five games are presented and tested experimentally. The experimental data support potential maximization as a refinement of Nash equilibrium....

We study an OLG economy where productivity growth comes from two alternative sources: process innovation and learning-by-doing. There is a trade-off between the two in so far as frequent technological updates reduce the scope for learning on existing technologies. A conflict is shown to arise...