A fundamental question in social sciences is how trust emerges. We provide an answer which relies on the formation of social and economic relationships. We argue that behind trust lies the fact that individuals invest in connections taking into account the potential externalities networks...

In repeated games there is in general a large set of equilibria. We also know that in the repeated prisoners dilemma there is a profusion of neutrally stable strategies, but no strategy that is evolutionarily stable. This paper investigates whether and how neutrally stable strategies can be...

Repeated games tend to have large sets of equilibria. We also know that in the repeated prisoners dilemma there is a profusion of neutrally stable strategies, but no strategy that is evolutionarily stable. This paper shows that for all of these neutrally stable strategies there is a stepping...

This paper develops a model of the birth and death of cartels in the presence of enforcement activities by a Competition Authority (CA). We distinguish three sets of interventions: (a) detecting, prosecuting and penalizing cartels; (b) actions that aim to stop cartel activity in the short-term,...

In this paper we set out the welfare economics based case for imposing cartel penalties on the cartel overcharge rather than on the more conventional bases of revenue or profits (illegal gains). To do this we undertake a systematic comparison of a penalty based on the cartel overcharge with...

We consider the repeated prisoner's dilemma with implementation errors, and look at the resulting population dynamics, both analytically and with simulations. We show that with implementation errors, pure equilibrium strategies represented by finite state automata exhibit a structure that we...