We present an agent-based model to test two competing hypotheses in the theory of self-enforcing agreement. In cooperative teams (such as agricultural cooperatives), self-enforcing agreement plays a critical role in guaranteeing members' work incentives when the monitoring from a third party is...

An “information cascade” occurs when initial decisions coincide in a way that it is optimal for each of the subsequent individuals to ignore her or his private signals and follow the established pattern. Moscarini et. al (1996) developed a social learning model hitherto unexplored in an...

When physically similar products, of similar quality, are offered by retailers both online and offline, we often observe that the dispersion in prices of these products online is greater than the price dispersion offline. This observation runs counter to early theories that suggested price...

This paper uses an estimated structural model to argue that the option to move in and out of the parental home is an important insurance channel against labor market risk for youths who do not attend college. Using data from the NLSY97, I construct a new monthly panel of parent-youth coresidence...

This manuscript presents a theoretical cognitive game approach to analyze the potential behavior of consumers as a reaction to a government bailout plan at times of big recessions.The research found that the win-win situation is only achieved when consumers trust the government policy to expand...

While many theoretical works, particularly in Family Economics, rely on the Transferable Utility (TU) assumption, its exact implications in terms of individual preferences have never been fully worked out. In this paper, we provide a set of necessary and sufficient conditions for a group to...

Modern economies rely heavily on their infrastructure networks. These networks face threats ranging from natural disasters to human attacks. As networks are pervasive, the investments needed to protect them are very large; this motivates the study of targeted defense. What are the “key” nodes...

This papers develops a theory of intergenerational exchange for generations that are either selfish or have non-dynastic altruism. The main building blocks of the theory are forward and backward intergenerational goods (FIGs and BIGs) and the relationship between them. A FIG is a transfer from...

The institutional and ecological structure of Hardin’s “tragedy of the commons” appears deceptively simple: the open-access pasture eventually will be overexploited and degraded unless (i) it is privatized, (ii) the government regulates access and use, or (iii) the users themselves impose...