This paper examines an equilibrium model of social memory -- a society's vicarious beliefs about its past. We show that incorrect social memory is a key ingredient in creating and perpetuating destructive conflicts. We analyze an infinite-horizon model in which two countries face off each period...

Examples of repeated destructive behavior abound throughout the history of human societies. This paper examines the role of social memory -- a society's vicarious beliefs about the past -- in creating and perpetuating destructive conflicts. We examine whether such behavior is consistent with the...

The industrialization process of a country is often plagued by a failure to coordinate investment decisions. Using the Global Games approach we can solve this coordination problem and eliminate the problem of multiple equilibria. We show how appropriate information provision enhances efficiency....

Examples of repeated destructive behavior abound throughout the history of human societies. This paper examines the role of social memory --- a society's vicarious beliefs about the past --- in creating and perpetuating destructive conflicts. We examine whether such behavior is consistent with...

Psychological Game Theory (PGT) extends classical game theory allowing for the formal analysis of belief-dependent sentiments and emotions such as resentment, pride, shame, gratefulness, and the like. PGT incorporates these factors by relating agents subjective expected utility to players...

Game harmony is a generic game property that describes how harmonious (non-conflictual) or disharmonious (conflictual) the interests of players are, as embodied in the payoffs. It can be used to predict cooperation in two-player games. We show how, for large enough positive harmony...

Consider a large population of individuals that are repeatedly randomly matched to play a cyclic 2x2 game such as Matching Pennies with fixed roles assigned in the game. Some learn by sampling previous play of a finite number of other individuals in the same role. We analyze population dynamics...

We consider the model of social learning by Schlag (1996). Individuals must repeatedly choose an action in a multi-armed bandit. We assume that each indivdiual observes the outcomes of two other individuals' choices before her own next choice must be made -- the original model only allows for...

In this paper we report on a new methodology of observing subjects behavior in a laboratory situation: Videotaping groups of subjects who have to perform a common task provides information on decision processes that cannot be obtained by another method. We conducted a videotaped bargaining...