This book is a collection of essays in honor of John C. Harsanyi. Originally, we hoped that it would be ready in the year of his 70th birthday, but we did not quite succeed. It sometimes takes longer than anticipated to do things as well as one wants. I think that John Harsanyi will understand...

This paper introduces a new theoretic entity, a nominalist heuristic, defined as a focus on prominent numbers, indices or ratios. Abstractions used in the evaluation stage of decision making typically involve nominalist heuristics that are incompatible with expected utility theory which excludes...

The prior paper in this sequel, Pope (2009) introduced the concept of a nominalist heuristic, defined as a focus on prominent numbers, indices or ratios. In this paper the concept is used to show three things in how scientists and practitioners analyse and evaluate to decide (conclude). First,...

Experimental sealed-bid first-price auctions with private values in which feedback on the losing bids is provided yield lower revenues than auctions where this feedback is not given. The concept of weighted impulse balance equilibrium, which is based on a principle of ex post rationality and...

Conclusions favourable to flexible exchange rates typically accord with expected utility theory in ignoring the costs that exchange rate uncertainty generates for governments, central banks, firms and unions in: (i) choosing among available acts; and (ii) existing until learning the outcome of...

Leniency clauses, offering cartelists legal immunity if they blow the whistle on each other, is a recent anti-trust innovation. The authorities wish to thwart cartels and promote competition. This effect is not evident, however; whistle-blowing may enforce trust and collusion by providing a tool...

We explore the effects of the provision of an information-processing instrument - payoff tables - on behavior in experimental oligopolies. In one experimental setting, subjects have access to payoff tables whereas in the other setting they have not. It turns out that this minor variation in...