Sets closed under rational behavior were introduced by Basu and Weibull (1991) as subsets of the strategy space that contain all best replies to all strategy profiles in the set. We here consider a more restrictive notion of closure under rational behavior: a subset of the strategy space is...

This paper provides two conditions of epistemic robustness, robustness to alternative best replies and robustness to non-best replies, and uses them to characterize variants of curb sets in finite games, including the set of rationalizable strategies.

The importance of categorical reasoning in human cognition is well-established in psychology and cognitive science, and it is generally acknowledged that one of the most important functions of categorization is to facilitate prediction. This paper provides a model of optimal categorization. In...

In classical game theory, players have finitely many actions and evaluate outcomes of mixed strategies using a von Neumann-Morgenstern utility function. Allowing a larger, but countable, player set introduces a host of phenomena that are impossible in finite games. Firstly, in coordination...

We exploit a controlled frameless laboratory experiment to study settlement negotiations and the plaintiff's decision to raise a lawsuit in case of an impasse. We find that greater variance in court outcomes increases the litigation rate and lowers the settlement rate. This latter finding goes...

We test the assumption that preferences are unchanged throughout a strategic game in the absence of feedback. To do so, we study the relationship between the strategic nature of a game and players' identification in social groups. We present evidence that the strategic nature of the game affects...

We investigate how moral concerns about permit trading affect an endogenous pollution permit trading equilibrium, where governments choose non-cooperatively the amount of permits they allocate to domestic industries. Politicians may feel reluctant to allow permit trading and/or may prefer that...

This paper provides a definition of epistemic stability of sets of strategy profiles, and uses it to characterize variants of curb sets in finite games, including the set of rationalizable strategies and minimal curb sets.

The equilibrium outcome of a strategic interaction between two or more people may depend on the weight they place on each other's payoff. A positive, negative or zero weight represents altruism, spite or complete selfishness, respectively. Paradoxically, the real, material payoff in equilibrium...