Peace agreements without commitment

In this paper we present a model of war between two rational and completely informed players. We show that in the absence of binding agreements war can be avoided in many cases by one player transferring money to the other player. In most cases, the "rich" country transfers part of her money to the "poor" country. Only when the military proficiency of the "rich" country is sufficiently great, it could be that the "poor" country can stop the war by transfering part of its resources to the "rich" country

Rational Sabotage in Cooperative Production with Heterogeneous Agents

We present a model of cooperative production in which rational agents might carry out sabotage activities that decrease output. We provide necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence of a Nash equilibrium without sabotage. It is shown that the absence of sabotage in equilibrium depends on the interplay between technology, relative productivity of agents and the degree of meritocracy. In particular we show that, ceteris paribus, meritocratic systems give more incentives to sabotage than egalitarian systems.Publicad

Cooperative production and efficiency

We characterize the sharing rule for which a contribution mechanism achieves efficiency in a cooperative production setting when agents are heterogeneous. The sharing rule bears no resemblance to those considered by the previous literature. We also show for a large class of sharing rules that if Nash equilibrium yields efficient allocations, the production function displays constant returns to scale, a case in which cooperation in production is useless

Rational Sabotage in Cooperative Production with Heterogeneous Agents

We present a model of cooperative production in which rational agents might carry out sabotage activities that decrease output. We provide necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence of a Nash equilibrium without sabotage. It is shown that the absence of sabotage in equilibrium depends on the interplay between technology, relative productivity of agents and the degree of meritocracy. In particular we show that, ceteris paribus, meritocratic systems give more incentives to sabotage than egalitarian systems.Cooperative production, sharing rules, sabotage

Endogenous strength in conflicts

In this paper we study a two stage contest where the strength of players in the second stage depends on the result of the contest in the first stage. We show that this contest displays properties that are not present in one shot contests. Non-symmetric players make different efforts in the first stage and rent dissipation in the first period may be large. We study the conditions under which the discouragement effect holds. In addition, new issues emerge like the evolution of the strengths and the shares of the prize during the game.

Oligopolistic equilibrium and financial constraints

In this paper we present a model of oligopoly and financial constraints. We study allocations which are bankruptcy-free (BF) in the sense that no firm can drive another firm to bankruptcy without becoming bankrupt. We show how such allocations can be sustained as an equilibrium of a dynamic game. When there are two firms, all equilibria yield BF allocations. When there are more than two firms, allocations other than BF can be sustained as equilibria but in some cases the set of BF allocations still useful in explaining the shape of equilibrium set.

Peace agreements without commitment

In this paper we present a model of war between two rational and completely informed players. We show that in the absence of binding agreements war can be avoided in many cases by one player transferring money to the other player. In most cases, the “rich” country transfers part of its money to the “poor” country. But when the military proficiency of the “rich” country is sufficiently high the “poor” country stops the war by transferring part of its resources to the “rich” country. War cannot be avoided by transfers when inequality of resources is very large or the cost of war is sufficiently low.Publicad

Endogenous strength in conflicts

In this paper we study a two stage contest where the strength of players in the second stage depends on the result of the contest in the first stage. We show that this contest displays properties that are not present in one shot contests. Non-symmetric players make different efforts in the first stage and rent dissipation in the first period may be large. We study the conditions under which the discouragement effect holds. In addition, new issues emerge like the evolution of the strengths and the shares of the prize during the game

Growth in Illyria: the role of meritocracy in the accumulation of human capital

In this paper we present a dynamic model of cooperative production with human capital accumulation. We assume CES preferences on consumption and leisure in each period. When agents do not care about future generations, sustained growth occurs iff the elasticity of substitution between consumption and leisure is larger or equal than one. Meritocracy always has a positive effect on output, but when the elasticity of substitution is less than one, is only a level effect. When agents care about future generations, under Cobb&-Douglas preferences in each period and some extra conditions, there is constant growth at a rate that is larger than the one when future generations do not count. For any discount rate between generations, there is a unique level of meritocracy for which efficiency is achieved.Thanks to the MOMA network under the project ECO2014-57673-REDT for financial support. The first author acknowledges financial support from ECO2014 53051, SGR2014-515 and PROMETEO/2013/037. The second author acknowledges financial support from ECO2014-57442-P, and financial support from the Ministerio Economía y Competitividad (Spain), grants S2015/HUM-3444 and MDM 2014-0431

On the Generic Impossibility of Truthful Behavior: A Simple Approach

We provide an elementary proof showing how in economies with an arbitrary number of agents an arbitrary number of public goods and quasi-linear utility functions, any efficient and individuaHy rational mechanism is not strategy-proof for any economy satisfying a mild regularity requirement