The mechanisms in the Nash program for cooperative games are made compatible with the framework of the theory of implementation. This is done through a reinterpretation of the characteristic function that avoids feasibility problems, thereby allowing an analysis that focuses exclusively on the...

The EU declares to provide support for the rural and poor regions of its member states. However, recent research shows that past EU budget allocations (in EU-15) can largely be explained by measures of the distribution of voting power in the Council of Ministers deciding on the bulk of EU...

We investigate the implications of converse consistency in the context of bargaining. A solution is conversely consistent if whenever for some problem, a feasible alternative has the property that for all proper subgroups of the agents it involves, the solution chooses the restriction of the...

In this paper we view bargaining and cooperation as an interaction superimposed on a game in strategic form. A multistage bargaining procedure for N players, the "proposer commitment" procedure, is presented. It is inspired by Nash's two-player variable-threat model; a key feature is the...

We consider the allocation of a finite number of indivisible objects to the same number of agents according to an exogenously given queue. We assume that the agents collaborate in order to achieve an efficient outcome for society. We allow for side-payments and provide a method for obtaining...

In a seminal paper relating economic and game theoretic structures, Shapley and Shubik (1969) demonstrate that a game is a market game -- that is, a game derived from a finite-dimensional private goods exchange economy where all participants have continuous, concave utility functions. In this...

It is a constant topic of debate how the European Union (EU) spends the money it collects from its member states. This paper supports the idea that the EU budget battle involves one-shot games that have persistent impacts on the budget allocations. In one way or the other, the member states are...

What are the roots of social capital and how can it be measured and built? Social capital is considered as a new production factor which must be added to the conventional concepts of human and physical capital. Social capital is productive because it increases the level of trust in a society and...