Linking of Repeated Games. When Does It Lead to More Cooperation and Pareto Improvements?

Linking of repeated games and exchange of concessions in fields of relative strength may lead to more cooperation and to Pareto improvements relative to the situation where each game is played separately. In this paper we formalize these statements, provide some general results concerning the conditions for more cooperation and Pareto improvements to materialize or not and analyze the relation between both. Special attention is paid to the role of asymmetries.Environmental Policy, Linking, Folk Theorem, Tensor Game, Prsioners' Dilemma, Full Cooperation, Pareto Efficiency, Minkowski Sum, Vector Maximum, Convex Analysis

On the uniqueness of Cournot equilibrium in case of concave integrated price flexibility

We consider a class of homogeneous Cournot oligopolies with concave integrated price flexibility and convex cost functions. We provide new results about the semi-uniqueness and uniqueness of (Cournot) equilibria for the oligopolies that satisfy these conditions. The condition of concave integrated price flexibility is implied by (but does not imply) the log-concavity of a continuous decreasing price function. So, our results generalize previous results for decreasing log-concave price functions and convex cost functions. We also discuss the particular type of quasi-concavity that characterizes the conditional revenue and profit functions of the firms in these oligopolies and we point out an error of the literature on the equilibrium uniqueness in oligopolies with log-concave price functions. Finally, we explain how the condition of concave integrated price flexibility relates to other conditions on the price and aggregate revenue functions usually considered in the literature, e.g., their concavity

The two-stage game approach to coalition formation: Where we stand and ways to go

Coalition formation is often analysed in an almost non-cooperative way, as a two-stage game that consists of a first stage comprising membership actions and a second stage with physical actions, such as the provision of a public good. We formalised this widely used approach for the case where actions are simultaneous in each stage. Herein, we give special attention to the case of a symmetric physical game. Various theoretical results, in particular, for cartel games, are provided. As they are crucial, recent results on the uniqueness of coalitional equilibria of Cournot-like physical games are reconsidered. Various concrete examples are included. Finally, we discuss research strategies to obtain results about equilibrium coalition structures with abstract physical games in terms of qualitative properties of their primitives.</p

Discrete hotelling pure location games: potentials and equilibria

We study two-player one-dimensional discrete Hotelling pure location games assuming that demand f(d) as a function of distance d is constant or strictly decreasing. We show that this game admits a best-response potential. This result holds in particular for f(d) = wd with 0 < w ≤ 1. For this case special attention will be given to the structure of the equilibrium set and a conjecture about the increasingness of best-response correspondences will be made

Cournot tatonnement and Nash equilibrium in binary status games

We study a rather simplified game model of competition for status. Each player chooses a scalar variable (say, the level of conspicuous consumption), and then those who chose the highest level obtain the "high" status, while everybody else remains with the "low" status. Each player strictly prefers the high status, but they also have intrinsic preferences over their choices. The set of all feasible choices may be continuous or discrete, whereas the strategy sets of different players can only differ in their upper and lower bounds. The resulting strategic game with discontinuous utilities does not satisfy the assumptions of any general theorem known as of today. Nonetheless, the existence of a (pure strategy) Nash equilibrium, as well as the "finite best response improvement property," are established

Cournot tatonnement and Nash equilibrium in binary status games

We study a rather simplified game model of competition for status. Each player chooses a scalar variable (say, the level of conspicuous consumption), and then those who chose the highest level obtain the "high" status, while everybody else remains with the "low" status. Each player strictly prefers the high status, but they also have intrinsic preferences over their choices. The set of all feasible choices may be continuous or discrete, whereas the strategy sets of different players can only differ in their upper and lower bounds. The resulting strategic game with discontinuous utilities does not satisfy the assumptions of any general theorem known as of today. Nonetheless, the existence of a (pure strategy) Nash equilibrium, as well as the "finite best response improvement property," are established

Cournot equilibrium uniqueness in case of concave industry revenue: a simple proof

A simple proof of an equilibrium uniqueness result by Murphy, Sherali and Soyster for homogeneous Cournot oligopolies with concave industry revenue function and convex cost functions is provided. Adapting this proof, a substantial improvement of their result is obtained; the improvement concerns capacity constraints, non-differentiable cost functions and industry revenue functions that are discontinuous at 0.</p

The Continuous Hotelling Pure Location Game with Elastic Demand Revisited

The Hotelling pure location game has been revisited. It is assumed that there are two identical players, strategy sets are one-dimensional, and demand as a function of distance is constant or strictly decreasing. Besides qualitative properties of conditional payoff functions, attention is given to the structure of the equilibrium set, best-response correspondences and the existence of potentials