On the Non-Cooperative Foundations of Cooperative Bargaining

In this note we challenge the non-cooperative foundations of cooperative bargaining solutions on the grounds that the limit operation for approaching a frictionless world is not robusto We show that when discounting almost ceases to play a role, any individually rational payoff can be supported by some subgame perfect equilibrium. To seLect the "correct" point imposes excessive informationaL requirements on the anaLyst

Characterizations of perfect recall

This paper considers the condition of perfect recall for the class of arbitrarily large discrete extensive form games. The known definitions of perfect recall are shown to be equivalent even beyond finite games. Further, a qualitatively new characterization in terms of choices is obtained. In particular, an extensive form game satisfies perfect recall if and only if the set of choices, viewed as sets of ultimate outcomes, fulfill the Trivial Intersection property, that is, any two choices with nonempty intersection are ordered by set inclusion

Reduced Normal Forms Are Not Extensive Forms

Fundamental results in the theory of extensive form games have singled out the reduced normal form as the key representation of a game in terms of strategic equivalence. In a precise sense, the reduced normal form contains all strategically relevant information. This note shows that a difficulty with the concept has been overlooked so far: given a reduced normal form alone, it may be impossible to reconstruct the game’s extensive form representation