The common prior assumption justifies private beliefs as posterior probabilities when updatinga common prior based on individual information. Common priors are pervasive in most economicmodels of incomplete information and oligopoly models with asymmetrically informed firms. Wedispose of the...

In a market with stochastic demand at most one seller can acquire costly informationabout demand. Other sellers entertain idiosyncratic beliefs about the marketdemand and the probability that an informed seller is trading in the market. Theseidiosyncratic beliefs co-evolve with the potential...

In this note we establish that rational demand expectations willtypically not evolve in an evolutionary model. In an evolutionarymodel beliefs act like a commitment device to more aggressive be-havior. This commitment effect has the same direction for strategicsubstitutes and complements and...

The variable threat-bargaining model of Nash (1953) assumes that threats in the senseof binding commitments as to what one will do if bargaining ends in conflict, are chosenbefore bargaining. By comparison, late threats to be chosen after bargaining end in conflict,appear more natural and would...

Does geographic distance or the perceived social distance between subjects significantlyaffect proposer and responder behavior in ultimatum bargaining? To answer this question,subjects play a one-shot ultimatum game with three players (proposer, responder, and apassive dummy player) and...

On a heterogeneous experimental oligopoly market, sellers choose a price,specify a set-valued prior-free conjecture about the others' behavior, andform their own profit-aspiration for each element of their conjecture. Weformally define the concepts of satisficing and prior-free optimality...

Theoretically and experimentally, we generalize the analysis of acquiringa company (Samuelson and Bazerman 1985) by allowing for competition ofboth, buyers and sellers. Naivety of both is related to the idea that higherprices exclude worse qualities. While competition of naive buyers...

In a stochastic duopoly market, sellers must form state-specific aspirationsexpressing how much they want to earn given their expectationsabout the other's behavior. We define individually and mutually satisficingsales behavior for given individual beliefs and aspiration profiles. In afirst...

Recently, new game theoretic approaches have been suggested that address the emergence of inter-firm collaborative agreements (strategic alliances) that are situated between standard market transactions of unrelated companies and their integration by means of mergers and acquisitions. This...

The common prior assumption asserts that the beliefs of agents in different states of theworld are their posteriors based on a common prior and possibly some private signal. Commonpriors are pervasive in most economic models of incomplete information, oligopoly models withasymmetrically informed...