In a rationing problem, each agent demands a quantity of a certain commodity and the available resources fall short of total demand. A rationing method solves this problem at every level of resources and individual demands. We impose three axioms: Consistency (with respect to variations of the...

In this paper we argue that authorities aid cooperation by means ofdirect coordination or the enforcement of re-commitment devices suchas contract laws.Credible threats of violence allow this role. In alocal interaction model, an authority forms if mutually connected individuals with sufficient...

This discussion paper led to a publication in 'Social Choice and Welfare', 2005, 24, 439-454.<P> Many economic and social situations can be represented by a digraph. Both axiomatic and iterativemethods to determine the strength or power of all the nodes in a digraph have been proposed inthe...</p>

The paper studies information processing imperfections in a fully rational decision-making network. It is shown that imperfect information transmission and imperfect information acquisition in a multi-stage selection game yield information overload. The paper analyses the mechanisms responsible...

While most papers_new on team decision-making find teams to behave more selfish, less trusting and less altruistic than individuals, Cason and Mui (1997) report that teams are more altruistic than individuals in a dictator game. Using a within-subjects design we re-examine group polarization by...

We study a politician's choice for state or private control of banks. The choice trades of lobbying contributions against social welfare, weighted by political accountability.Politicians facing few constraints prefer state control to maximize their rents. As state banks are less efficient, at...

This discussion paper led to the publication with the same title in 'International Game Theory Review' (2012), 14(2).<P> This note provides a methodological contribution to the allocation of joint revenues obtained from passepartouts. In a passepartout system a group of service providers offers a...</p>

This paper studies the internal organizational design of politicalinstitutions in presence of lobbying. We consider a legislature ascomposed of two bodies: the floor and an informational committee. Thefloor has the (formal) power to choose the policy to be implemented.The policy outcome is ex...

We study two aspects of globalization. It allows a decision-maker to go beyond his own local experience and to learn from other decision-makers in addressing common problems. This improves the identification and diffusion of best practices. It also provides extra information to `markets' that...

This discussion paper resulted in a publication in 'Games and Economic Behavior', 2007, 59, 85-104. <P> We consider cooperative games with transferable utility (TU-games), in which we allow for a social structure on the set of players. The social structure is utilized to refine the core of the...</p>