The common prior assumption asserts that the beliefs of agents in different states of the world are their posteriors based on a common prior and possibly some private signal. Common priors are pervasive in most economic models of incomplete information, oligopoly models with asymmetrically...

We examine the strategic behavior of first and second movers in a two party bargaining game with uncertain information transmission. When the first mover states her demand she does only know the probability with which the second mover will be informed about it. If the second mover is informed,...

Economic intuitions concerning rational behaviour in interactive social situations are shaped by idealized models which are regarded as "approximately true". But ideal models cannot be meaningfully deemed approximately true unless asymptotically convergent processes imply them as limit cases. We...

In this note we establish that rational demand expectations will typically not evolve in an evolutionary model. In an evolutionary model, beliefs act like a commitment device to more aggressive behavior. This commitment effect has the same direction for strategic substitutes and complements and...

To explain why pre-play communication increases cooperation in games, one refers to a) strategic causes such as efficient communication or reputation effects, and b) changes in the utilities due to social processes. Hitherto experimental support for both explanations is mixed and confounded. Our...

In an overlapping generations-experiment with multiple families participants can either support their parents directly and thereby reduce their tax burden or hope for tax-financed old age support. State productivity is captured by the factor with which total tax revenues are multiplied to...

Consistency and optimality together with converse consistency provide an illuminating and novel characterization of the equilibrium concept (Peleg and Tijs, 1996). But (together with non-emptiness) they preclude refinements of the equilibrium notion and selection of a unique equilibrium (Norde...

We consider a society composed of two regions. Each of them provides a public good whose benefits reach beyond local boundaries. In case of decentralization, taxes collected by members of a region are spent only on that region's public good. In case of centralization, tax receipts from the two...