Selfish, strategic players may benefit from cooperation, provided they reach agreement. It is therefore important to construct mechanisms that facilitate such cooperation, especially in the case of asymmetric private information. The two major issues are: (1) singling out a fair and efficient...

The standard framework for analyzing games with incomplete information models players as if they have an infinite depth of reasoning, which is not always consistent with experimental evidence. This paper generalizes the type spaces of Harsanyi (1967-1968) so that players can have a finite depth...

This paper constructs a type space that contains all types with a finite depth of reasoning, as well as all types with an infinite depth of reasoning - in particular those types for whom finite-depth types are conceivable, or think that finite-depth types are conceivable in the mind of other...

In an important paper, Weinstein and Yildiz (2007) show that if players have an infinite depth of reasoning and this is commonly believed, types generically have a unique rationalizable action in games that satisfy a richness condition. We show that this result does not extend to environments...

The standard framework for analyzing games with incomplete information models players as if they form beliefs about their opponents' beliefs about their opponents' beliefs and so on, that is, as if players have an infinite depth of reasoning. This strong assumption has nontrivial implications,...

A frequently heard explanation for the underdeveloped metro system in Rome is the following one: If we tried to build a new metro line, it would probably be stopped by archeological finds that are too valuable to destroy, so the investment would be wasted. This statement, which seems...

Though some economic environments provide allocation rules that are implementable in dominant strategies (strategy-proof), a significant number of environments yield impossibility results. On the other hand, while there are quite general possibility results regarding implementation in Nash or...

In Bayesian environments with private information, as described by the types of Harsanyi, how can types of agents be (statistically) disassociated from each other and how are such disassociations reflected in the agents' knowledge structure? Conditions studied are (i) subjective independence...

Mit dem Beitritt der zehn neuen Mitgliedsstaaten zur Europäischen Union im Mai 2004 wird sich die bestehende Machtverteilung zwischen den EU-Staaten verändern. Die Erweiterung wird sich auf die Effizienz der Entscheidungsfindung auswirken und deshalb sind weitere institutionelle Reformen...

Economics has devoted little attention so far as to whether the type of decision maker matters for economic decisions. However, many important decisions like those on monetary policy or a company’s business strategy are made by (small) groups rather than an individual. We compare behaviour of...