Theories can be produced by experts seeking a reputation for having knowledge. Hence, a tester could anticipate that theories may have been strategically produced by uninformed experts who want to pass an empirical test. We show that, with no restriction on the domain of permissible theories,...

The difficulties in properly anticipating key economic variables may encourage decision makers to rely on experts' forecasts. Professional forecasters, however, may not be reliable and so their forecasts must be empirically tested. This may induce experts to forecast strategically in order to...

We examine Popper's falsifiability within an economic model in which a tester hires a potential expert to produce a theory. Payments are contingent on the performance of the theory vis-a-vis data. We show that if experts are strategic, falsifiability has no power to distinguish scientific...

The difficulties in properly anticipating key economic variables may encourage decision makers to rely on experts’ forecasts. Professional forecasters, however, may not be reliable and so their forecasts must be empirically tested. This may induce experts to forecast strategically in order to...

We examine the fundamental concept of Popper’s falsifiability within an economic model in which a tester hires a potential expert to produce a theory. Payments are made contingent on the performance of the theory vis-a-vis future realizations of the data. We show that if experts are strategic,...

We prove the folk theorem for discounted repeated games under private, almost-perfect monitoring. Our result covers all finite, n-player games that satisfy the usual full-dimensionality condition. Mixed strategies are allowed in determining the individually rational payoffs. We assume no...

The folk theorem of repeated games has established that cooperative behavior can be sustained as an equilibrium in repeated settings. Early papers on private monitoring and a recent paper of Cole and Kocherlakota (Games and Economic Behavior, 53 [2005], 59-72) challenge the robustness of this...