Reputation and commitment in two-person repeated games without discounting

Two-person repeated games with no discounting are considered where there is uncertainty about the type of the players. If there is a possibility that a player is an automaton committed to a particular pure or mixed stage-game action, then this provides a lower bound on the Nash equilibrium payoffs to a normal type of this player. The lower bound is the best available and is robust to the existence of other types. The results are extended to the case of two-sided uncertainty. This work extends Schmidt (1993) who analyzed the restricted class of conflicting interest games

Reputation and perfection in repeated common interest games

We consider a wide class of repeated common interest games perturbed with one-sided incomplete information: one player (the informed player) might be a commitment type playing the Pareto dominant action. As discounting, which is assumed to be symmetric, and the prior probability of the commitment type go to zero, it is shown that the informed player can be held close to her minmax payoff even when perfection is imposed on the equilibrium

Reputation in perturbed repeated games

The paper analyzes reputation effects in perturbed repeated games with discounting. If there is some positive prior probability that one of the players is committed to play the same (pure) action in every period, then this provides a lower bound for her equilibrium playoff in all Nash equilibria. This bound is tight and independent of what other types have positive probability. It is generally lower than Fudenberg and Levine's bound for games with a long-run player facing a sequence of short-run opponents. The bound cannot be improved by considering types playing finitely complicated history-dependent commitment strategies

Common learning

Consider two agents who learn the value of an unknown parameter by observing a sequence of private signals. The signals are independent and identically distributed across time but not necessarily across agents. We show that when each agent's signal space is finite, the agents will commonly learn the value of the parameter, that is, that the true value of the parameter will become approximate common knowledge. The essential step in this argument is to express the expectation of one agent's signals, conditional on those of the other agent, in terms of a Markov chain. This allows us to invoke a contraction mapping principle ensuring that if one agent's signals are close to those expected under a particular value of the parameter, then that agent expects the other agent's signals to be even closer to those expected under the parameter value. In contrast, if the agents' observations come from a countably infinite signal space, then this contraction mapping property fails. We show by example that common learning can fail in this case

The spray-thinning of Newcastle apricots

THE spray-thinning of fruit trees is a difficult technique to master. Moreover, local climatic conditions increase the difficulties involved, for our warm winters tend to lead to delayed foliation which in turn means that fruit tree blossoms open over a long period and that individual trees of the same variety blossom at slightly different times

Stop-drop Sprays for Jonathon apples

There is at present no foolproof and entirely satisfactory stop-drop spray for apples. This is unfortunate as the average grower desires simplicity. To date three materials have been included in experimental work undertaken by the Department of Agriculture namely NAA (alpha naphthalene acetic acid), 245TA (tri ethanol amine salt of 245 tri chloro phenoxy acetic acid) and 245TP (tri ethanol amine salt of 245 tri chloro phenoxy proprionic acid)

The raising of seedling apple rootstock

Seedling apple rootstocks are used extensively elsewhere in Australia and overseas and some interest is being shown in them locally by both nurserymen and fruit growers, firstly on account of the shortage of stocks and also because of their vigour. Prior to the war, Northern Spy was the favoured stock, but since the war, Pomme de Neige rootgrafts have been used extensively and more interest has been taken in seedlings

English fruit tree rootstocks

The present-day fruit tree consists of two interdependent parts—the stock or root system and the scion or above ground portion. The scion naturally gains most prominence, as it is the part of the tree with which the grower is mainly concerned in orchard management and also the portion which provides him with his income. Nevertheless, the rootstock can exert a profound influence on tree performance. For instance, such factors as root anchorage, root penetration, drought resistance, resistance to pests and diseases, susceptibility to mineral deficiencies, growth characteristics of the tree and its ultimate size, its time of flowering, setting, fruit size and colour, period of ripening and the quality of the fruit can all be affected by the choice of rootstocks

Commercial chrysanthemum growing.

The chrysanthemum is England\u27s most important commercial flower crop and is extensively produced in Europe and the United States. Climatic conditions in these areas are rather different from those in Western Australia, but a description of the English and American practices may be of interest to local growers and could bring to light useful information. Furthermore recent research has led to the introduction of new ideas and fundamental information on the physiology of the chrysanthemum plant is being accumulated