Decisiones de consumo: un ejemplo usando una solución dinámica "Cournot- Nash"

In recent years there have been numerous studies about the formation of the savings rate. However, little attention has been paid to the growing incorporation of women to the labour market on the concumption decision making of households. This decision making changes when both partners have utility functions which are combined inside the household. In this situation, duopolistic behaviours can take place and the final result -the stock of wealth or savings- will depend on the strategy, co-operative or not, followed by the participants. Our model has two basic features: the underlying stock of wealth changes as a result of the actions of both participants, and each participants takes in account of the other's actions. This strategic aspect is studied, for example, by using the concept of a Cournot- Nash equilibrium in which each partner's reaction depends on the stock of wealth and not on previous behaviour. This, the model is a discreet-time alogue of a differential game. The paper examines the dynamic and steady- state proporties of savings level that result from the participants' interactions.Durante los últimos años se ha prestado gran atención al estudio de la formación del nivel de ahorro. Sin embargo, hay un factor que no ha sido suficientemente elaborado: la repercusión de la creciente incorporación de la mano de obra femenina al mundo laboral sobre el nivel de decisiones de consumo o ahorro de las economías domésticas. Dicha toma tradicional de decisiones se ve alterada cuando los dos cónyuges tienen funciones de utilidad separadas que combinan dentro del "hogar". Esto puede dar lugar a situaciones duopolísticas en las que el resultado final -el nivel de riqueza o ahorro- dependerá de la estrategia -colusiva o no - seguida por los participantes. El modelo -un ejercicio simple en la línea comentada- presenta dos características básicas: el nivel de ahorros cambia como resultado de la acción de ambos cónyuges y cada uno de ellos toma en mente las acciones del otro. El aspecto estratégico se estudia usando el concepto de equilibrio Cournot-Nash en un contexto dinámico -la reacción de cada participante en el juego dependerá del nivel de ahorro (variable de estado) y no de comportamientos anteriores-. Así. el modelo es análogo a un juego diferencial en tiempo discreto. El artículo examina las propiedades dinámicas y steady state del nivel de ahorro que resultan de la interacción de los participantes

Nash Equilibrium and information transmission coding and decoding rules

The design of equilibrium protocols in sender-receiver games where communication is noisy occupies an important place in the Economic literature. This paper shows that the common way of constructing a noisy channel communication protocol in Information Theory does not necessarily lead to a Nash equilibrium. Given the decoding scheme, it may happen that, given some state, it is better for the sender to transmit a message that is different from that prescribed by the codebook. Similarly, when the sender uses the codebook as prescribed, the receiver may sometimes prefer to deviate from the decoding scheme when receiving a message.Noisy channel, Shannon's Theorem, sender-receiver games, Nash equilibrium

Pragmatic Languages with Universal Grammars

This paper shows the existence of an equilibrium pragmatic Language with a universal grammar as a coordination device under communication misunderstandings. Such a language plays a key role in achieving efficient outcomes in those Sender-Receiver games where there may exist noisy information transmission. The Language is pragmatic in the sense that the Receiver’ best response depends on the context, i.e, on the payoffs and on the initial probability distribution of the states of nature of the underlying game. The Language has a universal grammar because the coding rule does not depend on such specific parameters and can then be applied to any Sender-Receiver game with noisy communication.grammar, pragmatic language, prototypes, separating equilibria

Delegated agency in multiproduct oligopolies with indivisible goods

This paper focuses on oligopolistic markets in which indivisible goods are sold by multiproduct firms to a continuum of homogeneous buyers, with measure normalized to one, who have preferences over bundles of products. Our analysis contributes to the literature on delegated agency games with direct externalities and complete information, extending the insights by Berheim and Whinston (1986, a , b) to markets with indivisibilities. By analyzing a kind of extended contract schedules - mixed bundling prices - that discriminate on exclusivity, the paper shows that efficient equilibria always exist in such settings. There may also exist inefficient equilibria in which the agent chooses a suboptimal bundle and no principal has a profitable deviation inducing the agent to buy the surplus-maximizing bundle because of a coordination problem among the pricipals. Inefficient equilibria can be ruled out by either assuming that all firms are pricing unsold bundles at the same profit margin as the bundle sold at equilibrium, or imposing the solution concept of subgame perfect strong equilibrium, which requires the absence of profitable deviations by any subset of principals and the agent. More specific results about the structure of equilibrium prices and payoffs for common agency outcomes are offered when the social surplus function is monotone and either submodular or supermodular.Multiproduct Price Competition, Delegated Agency Games, Mixed Bundling Prices, Subgame Perfect Nash Equilibrium, Strong Equilibrium

Trade liberalization in vertically related markets

This paper looks into the desirability of trade liberalization for manufacturers, retailers and consumers. The analysis compares the move from the autarky situation to either one of free trade that entails a change in the distribution system or not. We also examine whether the interests of manufacturers and retailers about the preferred distribution system coincide, provided trade opens. We find that market integration is beneficial to all agents only under certain conditions on the degree of market asymmetry and the degree of product differentiation. Interestingly, if integration entails a change in the distribution system, the conflict between manufacturers and retailers strengthens since only retailers prefer free trade when markets are not too asymmetric and when interbrand competition is sufficiently strong. Furthermore, consumers can be harmed by trade and, in a setting without exclusivities, one country may experience a welfare decrease. Finally, the analysis of the strategic choice concerning exclusivity clauses uncovers that retailers and manufacturers never agree about their preference for endogenous distribution systems.International competition, vertical relationships.

Entry with two correlated signals : the case of industrial espionage and its positive competitive effects

Recent advances in information and communication technologies have increased the incentives for firms to acquire information about rivals. These advances may have major implications for market entry because they make it easier for potential entrants to gather valuable information about, for example, an incumbent's cost structure. However, little theoretical research has actually analyzed this question. This paper advances the literature by extending a one-sided asymmetric information version of Milgrom and Roberts' (1982) limit pricing model. Here, the entrant is allowed access to an intelligence system (IS) of a certain precision that generates a noisy signal on the incumbent's cost structure. The entrant thus decides whether to enter the market based on two signals: the price charged by the incumbent and the signal sent by the IS. Crucially, for intermediate values of IS precision, the set of pooling equilibria with ex-ante profitable market entry is non-empty. Moreover, the probability of ex-ante non-profitable entry is strictly positive. In classical limit pricing models, an entrant never enters in a pooling equilibrium, so this result suggests that the use of an IS may potentially increase competition

Wage premium in the industrial sector of the spanish economy : empirical evidence.

t. This paper presents evidence that firm-level productivity increases when the relative wage rises, or the level of unemployment rises. Both facts are consistent with the efficiency wage model. Moreover, there is support for the idea that an increase in the sector"s wage with respect to the previous year also increases productivity. We obtain the empirical evidence through a double-hurdle model. We use this estimation technique because it can be established that the differences in productivity between sectors could be explained by differences in effort. It means that some of the industrial sectors of the Spanish economy may pay wage premia while others do not. We also test this implication through panel data

Monopoly experimentation

This paper considers a firm facing an uncertain demand curve. The firm can experimentally adjust its output in order to gain information that willincrease expected future profits. We examine two basic questions. Under whatconditions is it worthwhile for the firm to experiment? How does the firmadjust its output away from the myopic optimism to exploit its ability to experiment? Two necessary conditions are established for experimentation tooccur, involving requirements that experimentation be informative and thatinformation be valuable. Conditions are then established for experimentationto induce the firm to increase or decrease quantity. These results, whichcontain several previous analyses as special cases, provide an understanding of experimentation that will be useful in a number of applications.

INTROSPECTION AND EQUILIBRIUM SELECTION IN 2x2 MATRIX GAMES

Game theory lacks an explanation of how players' beliefs are formed and why they are in equilibrium. This is the reason why it has failed to make significant advances with the problem of equilibrium selection even for quite siniple games, as 2x2 games with two strict Nash equilibria. Our paper models the introspection process by which the selected equilibrium is achieved in this class of games. Players begin their analysis with imprecise priors, obtained under weak restrictions formulated as Axioms. For a large class of reasoning dynamics we obtain as the solution the risk dominant Nash equilibrium.

Strategic policy and international economic integration

In a context of economic integration, we analyse the strategic effect of wo policies: merger policy and state aid policy. When governments play a Stackelberg policy game before firms compete in the market we find that: a) only under certain conditions, the leader country chooses a merger policy and, b) there is a policy equivalence in welfare terms for the follower. A centralised policy decision is welfare improving relative to the strategic policy game and equals total welfare of the area under autarky. Besides, there always exists a social incentive to propose mergers and both, the state aid level and the state aid expenditure, are lower.Merger policy, state aid, market enlargement