We consider a model of international trade with increasing returns in a non-traded input into industry, infrastructure, and show that the nature of equilibrium depends crucially on whether the infrastructure provider acts in a nave manner akin to a Level 1 agent in a cognitive hierarchy (C-H)...

Multiple Pareto-rankable equilibria may obtain in an overlapping generations model where consumers save to reach a fixed target. Existence and uniqueness conditions are discussed. The model displays excess consumption sensitivity to current income and perfect old-age insurance.

If the consumer’s risk aversion behavior varies intertemporally and if the risk aversion coefficient on future consumption becomes very large, the consumer tends to aim at a fixed future consumption target. A by-product is a reinterpretation of subsistence theories of consumption.

We examine a model in which the utility function has been engineered so that it is optimal for consumers to aim for a fixed target level of retirement resources. In this case consumption displays excess sensitivity to current income as well as perfect old age insurance. In an overlapping...

Experimental evidence and economic examples like Basu's (1984) taxi-driver problem illustrate that many people are honest (or good) even when beyond the reach of the law, and without repeated interactions or reputation effects. We provide game-theoretic underpinnings of the level of goodness in...

Equilibrium in international trade with increasing returns in infrastructure depends on whether the infrastructure provider is "naïve" or sophisticated. A monopolist produces infrastructure under decreasing cost using fixed equipment. Unlike similar work, we derive a <i>unique</i> closed-economy...

Even where all agents are risk-neutral, merchants can insure themselves against piracy. Such self-insurance is surprisingly invulnerable to moral hazard. Further, there exist a patrolling intensity and/or penalties for captured pirates which, along with mercantile self-insurance, could eliminate...

Even risk-neutral individuals can insure themselves against crimes by combining direct expenditure on security with costly diversification. In such cases — and even when one of these options is infeasible — greater policing often actually encourages private precautions.

We model an economy with two final goods, manufactures produced under IRS and food. The scale economies in manufacturing are external (therefore compatible with perfect competition) and traceable to internal economies in the provision of an infrastructural service (the third sector of the...