The theory of melioration, originally formulated for individual decision-making contexts, is formally extended to a game theoretic framework. This paper proves the existence of a distribution that is a melioration strategy on the part of all players. Further, the question of stability of such a...

The paper develops a theoretical framework for studying conspicuous consumption. This is modeled as a device that signals the consumer's social status. Status is some function of the individual's rank in the wealth hierarchy. This approach makes it possible to distinguish between snob and...

The fact that according to the celebrated Coase Theorem rational parties always try to exploit all gains from trade is usually taken as an argument against the necessity of government intervention through Pigouvian taxation in order to correct externalities. However, we show that the hold-up...

In a recent contribution, H. Naito (1999) has shown that production efficiency may be violated in the optimum with non-linear income taxation. Using a slightly simpler framework, this paper complements Naito's analysis in showing that production efficiency does not hold in the optimum with (i)...

The study of evolutionary dynamics was so far mainly restricted to finite strategy spaces. In this paper we show that this unsatisfying restriction is unnecessary. We specify a simple condition under which the continuous time replicator dynamics are well defined for the case of infinte strategy...

Mismatches typically arise because of information problems in markets. This paper discusses the possibility of mismatching in partnerships focussing on strategic mismatches that cannot be explained by information problems. It is shown that due to market competition sometimes players can profit...

We analyze explicit and implicit contracts in a repeated principal-agent model with observable but only partially contractible actions of the agent. It is shown that the set of implementable actions may increase or decrease if additional actions become contractible.