In operant learning, behaviors are reinforced or inhibited in response to the consequences of similar actions taken in the past. However, because in natural environments the “same” situation never recurs, it is essential for the learner to decide what “similar” is so that he can...

A new Secretary Problem is considered, where for fixed k and m one wins if at some time i = m(j .. 1) + 1 up to jm one selects one of the j best items among the first jm items, j = 1,...,k. Selection is based on relative ranks only. Interest lies in small k values, such as k = 2 or 3. This is...

Organisms modify their behavior in response to its consequences, a phenomenon referred to as operant learning. The computational principles and neural mechanisms underlying operant learning are a subject of extensive experimental and theoretical investigations. Theoretical approaches largely...

Correlation of players' actions may evolve in the common course of the play of a repeated game with perfect monitoring (``obline correlation''). In this paper we study the concealment of such correlation from a boundedly rational player. We show that ``strong'' players, i.e., players whose...

Many competitions require investment of nonrefundable resources, e.g., political campaigns, financial markets, sports or courting rituals. One contestant wins the prize for the invested amount, while all others forfeit their investments without receiving compensation. Frequently, contests are...

It has been noted and demonstrated that people are reluctant to make changes in their current state (called the status quo bias, Samuelson & Zeckhauser, 1988), and to trade objects they own (called the endowment effect, Thaler, 1980). This reluctance has been explained by a combination of loss...

Extending to infinite state spaces that are compact metric spaces a result previously attained by D. Samet solely in the context of finite state spaces, a necessary and suficient condition for the existence of a common prior for several players is given in terms of the players' present beliefs...

This paper is concerned with the question of extending the definition of the bargaining set, a cooperative game solution, when cooperation takes place in a repeated setting. The focus is on situations in which the players face (finite or infinite) sequences of exogenously specified TU-games and...

Explaining human cooperation in large groups of non-kin is a major challenge to both rational choice theory and the theory of evolution. Recent research suggests that group cooperation can be explained assuming that cooperators can punish non-cooperators or cheaters. The experimental evidence...