Single-payoff farsighted stable sets in strategic games with dominant punishment strategies

We investigate the farsighted stable set in a class of strategic games with dominant punishment strategies. In this class of games, each player has a strategy that uniformly minimizes the other players’ payoffs for any given strategies of other players. We particularly investigate a special class of the farsighted stable sets each of which consists of strategy profiles yielding a single payoff vector. We call such farsighted stable sets as the single-payoff farsighted stable sets. We propose a concept called the inclusive set that completely characterizes the single-payoff farsighted stable sets in the strategic games with dominant punishment strategies. We also show that the set of payoff vectors yielded by the single-payoff farsighted stable sets is closely related to the strict -core in strategic games. Further, we apply the results to the strategic games where each player has two strategies and　strategic games associated with some market models.First version: September 30, 2016Revised version: October 24, 201

Risky punishment and reward in the prisoner's dilemma

We conduct a prisoner’s dilemma experiment with a punishment/reward stage, where punishments and rewards are risky. This is compared with a risk free treatment. We find that subjects do not change their behavior in the face of risky outcomes. Additionally, we measure risk attitude and the emotions of subjects. While we find a strong influence of emotions, individual risk aversion has no effect on the decision to punish or reward. This is good news for lab experiments who abstract from risky outcomes. From the perspective of social preferences, our results provide evidence for risk neutral inclusion of other player’s payoffs in the decisionmaker’s utility function

Social rationalizability

Social environments constitute a framework in which it is possible to study how groups of agents interact in a society.The framework is general enough to analyse both non-cooperative and cooperative games.We identify a number of shortcomings of existing solution concepts that are used for social environments and propose a new concept called social rationalizability.The concept aims to identify the consequences of common knowledge of rationality and farsightedness within the framework of social environments.The set of socially rationalizable outcomes is shown to be non-empty for all social environments and it can be computed by an iterative reduction procedure.We introduce a definition of coalitional rationality for social environments and show that it is satisfied by social rationalizability.

"When are Judges and Bureaucrats Left Independent? Theory and History from Imperial Japan, Postwar Japan, and the United States"

This is one chapter from the book, Judicial Independence: Economic Theory and Japanese Empirics, that Mark Ramseyer and Eric Rasmusen are writing. In preceding chapters we explain the institutions of modern Japan's judiciary and use regression analysis to test whether judges who rule in ways the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (the LDP) disliked were penalized in their careers. We find that they were for some kinds of cases\involving such things as the constitutionality of the military, injunctions against the national (but not local) government, reapportionment, and electioneering laws. They were not penalized for other kinds of cases\tax and criminal cases. Those results are drawn from our earlier published papers, reorganized and synthesized for the present book. This chapter does not draw on our published work. It asks why the degree and type of independence of judges in modern Japan is different from that of other civil servants. In particular, we compare judges in modern Japan, pre-war Japan, and the United States; and we compare judges with other kinds of public employees, asking why they are not elected and why they are not directly under the control of politicians.

Technological development, strategic behavior and government policy in information technology industries

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Political Science, 1989.Includes bibliographical references.by Charles H. Ferguson.Ph.D

Individuals, society and the world: a defence of collective environmental duties.

This thesis defends a collective duty to establish a global-level institution to tackle climate change. This is motivated through collective responsibility for environmental harm, and collective self-interest. Building on Larry May, it is contended that a number of individuals can be collectively responsible, in a weak but morally significant sense, for the (even unintended) predictable result of the combination of their individual acts. It is argued that this gives rise to a collective duty to remedy or end the harm, and correlative individual duties. The dominant intentionalist model of collectivities is rejected. Arguing against Margaret Gilbert, it is claimed that a collectivity is constituted by a set of individuals mutually dependent through some common goal, purpose or all-things-considered interest, whether or not they acknowledge it themselves. A capabilities model of human flourishing is defended, according to which it is not in someone's all-things-considered interest to be deprived of a central functional capability, on something like Martha Nussbaum's list. To undermine a person's capability to enjoy a central functioning is to do morally significant harm. It is argued that, especially for larger collectivities, it is often "better", in terms of achieving the common goals, purposes or interests, that certain decisions be made collectively, rather than left to the aggregation of individual acts. This appeals to: inefficiency, ignorance, the individual-collective rationality distinction, partial conflict, and rational altruist arguments. Collective (and correlative individual) duties to establish global environmental decision-making institutions are defended: prudentially, because most humans constitute a collectivity by virtue of the threat of climate change to fundamental interests, and morally, because most are collectively responsibility for harm. Finally, institutional change is called for, so that certain (primarily environmental) decisions are made by a global decision-making body and handed down as restrictions on states and individuals. A number of objections are addressed