Within the setting of two simple two-person coordinationgames the formation of subjective strategies is observed experimentally.Though the structure of the game is unknown playersuse their actions in order to coordinate on a specific equilibrium.Strategies enable them to interpret the...

If a strict equilibrium is suggested as the solution of a strategicgame in normal form and if some but not all players are committedto their solution strategy, a reduced game results with only thestill non-committed as active players. The reduced game property (orconsistency axiom) demands that...

The satisficing approach is generalized and applied to finite n-person games.Based on direct elicitation of aspirations, we formally define the conceptof satisficing, which does not exclude (prior-free) optimality but includesit as a border case. We also review some experiments on strategic...

We study aggregative games in which players’ strategy sets areconvex intervals of the real line and (not necessarily differentiable)payoffs depend only on a player’s own strategy and the sum of allplayers’ strategies. We give sufficient conditions on each player’s payofffunction to...

Player i's payoff in a noncooperative game is generally expressed as a function of thevector of strategies of all players. However, in some games - 'simply reducible games' - thepayoff of player i is a function of two arguments - the strategy chosen by i, and the sum ofthe strategies of all...

We model a simple justice system in which a court is mandated by society to assess the guilt and the punishment of an accused. The court takes prison facilities as given and neglects its impact on the cost to society of implementing the sentence. Clearly, the court, in this world, will condemn...

We analyze the dynamics of neighbourhood watch programs in a local interaction framework. Agents can watch their neighbours' houses and thus deter burglars from breaking in....

This paper considers the optimal communication spanning tree (OCST) problem. Previouswork analyzed features of high-quality solutions and found that edges in optimal solutions havelow weight and point towards the center of a tree. Consequently, integrating this problem-specific knowledge into a...

The theme of this year's WDR is how to structure institutions to bring about an effectively functioning market economy. There is no question that political institutions play a key role here. In most countries political institutions determine the rules of access to considerable discretionary...

In a punishment experiment, we separate the demand for punishmentin general from a possible demand to conduct punishmentpersonally. Subjects experience an unfair split of their earnings froma real effort task and have to decide on the punishment of the personwho determines the distribution....