The economic concept of the second-best involves the idea that multiple simultaneous deviations from a hypothetical first-best optimum may be optimal once the first-best itself can no longer be achieved, since one distortion may partially compensate for another. Within an evolutionary framework,...

A discrete symmetry of a preference relation is a mapping from the domain of choice to itself under which preference comparisons are invariant; a continuous symmetry is a one-parameter family of such transformations that includes the identity; and a symmetry field is a vector field whose...

Anscombe and Aumann (1963) offer a definition of subjective probability in terms of comparisons with objective probabilities. That definition - which has provided the basis for much of the succeeding work on subjective probability - presumes that the subjective probability of an event is...

The α-MEU model and the smooth ambiguity model are two popular models in decision making under ambiguity. However, the axiomatic foundations of these two models are not completely understood. We provide axiomatic foundations of these models in a symmetric setting with a product state space...

Since at least de Finetti [7], preference symmetry assumptions have played an important role in models of decision making under uncertainty. In the current paper, we explore (1) the relationship between the symmetry assumption of Klibanoff, Mukerji and Seo (KMS) [21] and alternative symmetry...

During recent decades, many new models have emerged in pure and applied economic theory according between Epstein (2010) and Klibanoff et al. (2012) identified a notable behavioral issue that distinguishes sharply between two classes of models of ambiguity sensitivity that are importantly...

Are initial competitive advantages self-reinforcing, so that markets exhibit an endogenous tendency to be dominated by only a few firms? Although this question is of great economic importance, no systematic empirical study has yet addressed it. Therefore, we examine experimentally whether firms...

This paper studies the effects of patents and subsidies on R&D investment decisions. The theoretical framework is a two-stage game consisting of an investment and a market stage. In equilibrium, both patents and subsidies induce the same amount of R&D investment, which is higher than the...