It is well known that the rock-paper-scissors game has no pure saddle point. We show that this holds more generally: A symmetric two-player zero-sum game has a pure saddle point if and only if it is not a generalized rock-paper-scissors game. Moreover, we show that every finite symmetric...

We show that for many classes of symmetric two-player games, the simple decision rule "imitate-the-best" can hardly be beaten by any other decision rule. We provide necessary and sufficient conditions for imitation to be unbeatable and show that it can only be beaten by much in games that are of...

While reviewing "Game Theory and the Law" by Baird, Gertner and Picker, the essay provides a self-contained, nontechnical introduction to modern noncooperative game theory.

While reviewing "Game Theory and the Law" by Douglas Baird, Robert Gertner, and Randal Picker, this essay provides a self-contained, layman's introduction to modern noncooperative game theory

This paper studies models where the optimal response functions under consideration are non-increasing in endogenous variables, and weakly increasing in exogenous parameters. Such models include games with strategic substitutes, and include cases where additionally, some variables may be...

Policy implications of complexity economics (CE) are investigated. CE deals with “Complex Adaptive (Economic) Systems” [CA(E)S], generally characterized by mechanisms and properties such as “emergence” of structure or some capacity of “self-organization”. With this, CE has manifold...

We report experimental evidence on second-movers' behavior in the investment game (also known as the trust game) when there exists endowment heterogeneity. Using a within-subject analysis, we investigate whether second-movers have a tendency to be reciprocal (i.e., they return to first movers at...

Arguments are statements used to persuade someone or in support of a claim. However, these are not perfect and part are be exploited by the opponent to build its own argumentation. In this paper we present a litigation success function (LSF) that considers the quality of the plainti¤ and...

The effect of the competition among self-regulatory organizations (SROs) on the efficiency of the corresponding goods and services markets is studied. It is shown that under certain conditions the competition among SROs worsens the quality of the goods and services and leads to decreasing...

This article experimentally studies a two-stage elimination contest and compares its performance with a one-stage contest. Contrary to the theory, the two-stage contest generates higher revenue than the equivalent one-stage contest. There is significant over-dissipation in both stages of the...