An Experimental Study in Oligopoly

A very general model with which many theories of oligopolistic behavior might be tested would be a useful tool for economists. In the first part of this paper a model is proposed for this role. The model is not developed in the fullest degree of generality, but is presented in the way most relevant to experiments of the type presented in the second part of the paper. The experiments employ a simple market model in which each subject takes the role of a business firm, each firm has only one decision variable under its control (its own price) and the number of firms in an industry is two, three and four

On Uncertain Lifetimes

This paper contrasts consumer choice under uncertain lifetimes with the behavior that would arise if each individual's lifetime were announced at birth. In a model that includes life insurance and excludes investments in human capital, the expected utility under uncertain lifetimes exceeds that under known lifetimes when the latter expectation is based on preannouncement survival probabilities. This conclusion emerges, first, because the model without human capital contains no planning benefits from knowledge of the horizon and, second, because the prior announcement of lifetimes forces risk-averse consumers to undertake an extra gamble that they could otherwise avoid by using life insurance.Economic