This paper suggests a theory of choice among strategic situations when the rules of play are not properly specified. We take the view that a quot;strategic situationquot; is adequately described by a TU game since it specifies what is feasible for each coalition but is silent on the procedures...

This note shows that the most informative equilibrium in the Crawford and Sobel (1982) game of strategic information transmission is almost fully revealing as the two players' preferences get closer to each other. It thus strengthens the original observation that the quality of information does...

Asymmetries in the abilities of contestants that engage in a protracted competition appear to be more common than symmetric competitions. Why doesn't the weaker player concede immediately? This paper introduces a model based on the idea that a "war" can only be won by winning a series of...

The assumption that agents possess private information is a feature of many economic models. Incentive compatibility is a basic requirement of any solution concept in such models. Often, for reasons of tractability, these models represent private information as variables that can take on a...

In a society where individuals differ in their evaluation of different social policies, when might one consider a given individual as having preferences that are extreme relative to the others? And how important are such preferences in determining eventual policy? In this paper, we describe an...

In this note we point out the effect of risk-aversion on both the speed of deterministic convergence and the waiting times involved in equilibrium selection in 2 X 2 coordination games. Risk-aversion destabilizes the Pareto optimal equilibrium in two different ways: it decreases the size of its...

This paper suggests a theory of choice among strategic situations when the rules of play are not properly specified. We take the view that a "strategic situation" is adequately described by a TU game since it specifies what is feasible for each coalition but is silent on the procedures that are...

Rarely, if ever, do parties contemplating a joint project commit resources without engaging in non-binding discussions on who does what. Here we argue that such noncommittal discussions may be essential to complete a joint project. We make this point by identifying an interesting class of...

The problem of ex ante choice between conflict situations is studied in an axiomatic model where individuals know the available surplus but are ignorant of the exact bargaining procedure. Furthermore, allowing for side-payments in a single good, a bargaining solution that is immune to ordinal...