Topics in Economic Theory, Spring 1999

Ariel Rubinstein

Meetings
# 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
Starting Date 15/4 22/4 27/5 10/6 24/6 1/7 8/7 29/7
Presenter Yoram Rani Oren Michal Michael Tali Sigal Kfir
Topic #   3 4 8 2 1 6 7 5
Topic Evolution Self Control Random dictator Psy Salience Poaching Core Contracts

Participants:
Name e-mail
Oren Bar-Gill bargill@bigfoot.com
Kfir Eliaz kfir@post.tau.ac.il
Yoram Hamo yoram@econ.tau.ac.il
Eran Hanany hananye@post.tau.ac.il
Michal Ilan michalil@netvision.net.il
Sigal Leviatan sigall@math.tau.ac.il
Michael Ornstein ornstein@econ.tau.ac.il
Tali Regev morphil@netvision.net.il
Ran Spiegler rani@econ.tau.ac.il

Topics
Number Topic Description References
1 Framing and Salience

Bacharach is a very interesting scholar who has interesting ideas about the origin of salient behavior. We will survey some of his papers on the subject and discuss it.

Bacharacah, M. "Cooperation without Communication", 1995.

Bacharacah, M. "Variable-frame Level-N theory", 1997

Bacharacah, M. "We Equilibria: A variable Frame Theory of cooperation", 1997.

2 Psychology and Games

To examine this growing field we will read and discuss two works  The first is a survey and a second is a representative of the work in the filed

Rabin, M. "Psychology and Economics", J.Econ.Lit, 36 (1998), 11-46.

Rabin, M. and Schrag "First Impressions Matter: A model of Confirmatory Bias", QJE, 94 (1999), 37-82. http://elsa.berkeley.edu/~rabin/wpapers2.html

3 Evolution

To see what is new in this area we will read a paper by one of the more original contributors of the field:

Robson, A. "The Evolution of Intelligence and the red Queen", 1999.

An abstract

4 Dynamic Inconsistency and Self control

We will examine methodologically an interesting (and not trivial) paper:

Gul, F. and W.Pesendorfer "Dynamic Inconsistency and Self Control", 1998.

http://www.princeton.edu/~pesendor/faruk.pdf

5 Incomplete contracts

Where do we stand in this area?

Tirole, J. "Incomplete Contracts: where do we stand?", 1998

Maskin, E. and J. Tirole "Unforeseen Contingencies and Incomplete Contracts", 1998.

Segal, E.

Find: in my office

6 Customer Poaching

It is not just a matter of IO....

Fudenberg, D. and J.Tirole "Customer Poaching and Brand Switching", 1997.

http://fudenberg.fas.harvard.edu/custom6.pdf

7 The assignment Core

A classical work which is still a mine for ideas:

Shapley, L. and M. Shubik "The Assignment Game I: The Core", Int J. game Theory 2(1972), 111-130.

8 Random Dictator

Why do we have an intuition that a random dictator is not such a great idea?

We will discuss the axiomatizaions of the idea and conduct a free discussion.

Barbera, S. "Majority and Positional Voting in a probabilistic Framework", RES 46 (1979), 379-389

and the references there (especially Gibbard's paper)