Although evidence accrues in biology, anthropology and experimental economics that homo sapiens is a cooperative species, the reigning assumption in economic theory is that individuals optimize in an autarkic manner (as in Nash and Walrasian equilibrium). I here postulate an interdependent kind...

Although evidence accrues in biology, anthropology and experimental economics that homo sapiens is a cooperative species, the reigning assumption in economic theory is that individuals optimize in an autarkic manner (as in Nash and Walrasian equilibrium). I here postulate a cooperative kind of...

We show that in almost every economy with separable externalities, every competitive equilibrium can be Pareto improved by a package of anonymous commodity taxes that causes prices to adjust and markets to reclear at different levels of individual consumption. This constrained suboptimality of...

Economic theory has focused almost exclusively on how humans compete with each other in their economic activity, culminating in general equilibrium (Walras) and game theory (Nash). Cooperation in economic activity is, however, important, and is virtually ignored. Because our models influence our...

Humans cooperate a great deal in economic activity, but our two major models of equilibrium – Walrasian competitive in markets and Nash in games – portray us as only non-cooperative. In earlier work, I have proposed a model of cooperative decision making (Kantian optimization); here, I embed...

We show that in almost every economy with separable externalities, every competitive equilibrium can be Pareto improved by a package of anonymous commodity taxes that cause prices to adjust and markets to reclear at different levels of individual consumption. The argument can be extended to...

We prove the existence of monetary equilibrium in a finite horizon economy with production. We also show that if agents expect the monetary authority to significantly decrease the supply of bank money available for short term loans in the future, then the economy will fall into a liquidity trap...

We analyze games of incomplete information and offer equilibrium predictions which are valid for, and in this sense robust to, all possible private information structures that the agents may have. We completely characterize the set of Bayes correlated equilibria in a class of games with...

We analyze games of incomplete information and offer equilibrium predictions which are valid for, and in this sense robust to, all possible private information structures that the agents may have. The set of outcomes that can arise in equilibrium for some information structure is equal to the...

We analyze a class of games with interdependent values and linear best responses. The payoff uncertainty is described by a multivariate normal distribution that includes the pure common and pure private value environment as special cases. We characterize the set of joint distributions over...