This paper studies the core of combined games, obtained by summing two coalitional games. It is shown that the set of balanced transferable utility games can be partitioned into equivalence classes of component games to determine whether the core of the combined game coincides with the sum of...

Theoretical models of government formation in political science usually assume that the head of state is non-strategic. In this paper, we analyze the power of an agenda setter who chooses the order in which players are recognized to form coalitions in simple games. We characterize those sets of...

Postal markets have been open to competition for a long time. But, with a few exceptions, the competitors of the incumbent postal operator are active on the upstream segments of the market -preparation, collection, outward sorting and transport of mail products. With the further steps planned in...

This note analyzes the effect of product complementarity in a bilateral oligopoly. We show that offers of traders on the two sides of the market are strategic complements (substitutes) if and only if the two goods are substitutes (complements). The outcome of the bilateral oligopoly game...

This paper analyzes the provision of matching services in a model of two-sided search. Agents belong to two populations and are uniformly distributed on [0,1]. Their utility is equal to the index of their mate. In a search equilibrium, as in Mac Namara and Collins (1990), agents form...

We examine the determinants of expenditures on wedding celebrations by rural Indian families. We develop a status signaling model of wedding celebrations where the size of the celebration signals the quality of the new groom’s family and, thus, the enhanced social status of the bride’s...

This paper proposes new concepts of strong and coalition-proof correlated equilibria where agents form coalitions at the interim stage and share information about their recommendations in a credible way. When players deviate at the interim stage, coalition-proof correlated equilibria may fail to...

This paper analyzes the formation of networks when players choose how much to invest in each relationship. We suppose that players have a fixed endowment that they can allocate across links, and in the baseline model, suppose that link strength is an additively separable and convex function of...

This paper studies bilateral insurance schemes across networks of individuals. While transfers are based on social norms, individuals must have the incentive to comply. We investigate the structure of self-enforcing insurance networks. Network links play two distinct and possibly conflictual...