Seigniorage, Inflation, and Reputation

This paper derives a reputational equilibrum for inflation in a model in which the government obtains valuable seigniorage by issuing fiat money in echange for real resources. One insightful result is that , with contemporaneous perceptionof actual government behavior and immediate adjustment of real cash balences to new information , the Friedman elasticity solution for maximal seigniorage is the reputatoinal equilibrium. More generally , the analysis shows that the objective of maximal seigniorage produces an equilibrium inflation rate equal either to a generalization of the Friedman elasticity solution or to the rate at which the government discounts future seigniorage adjusted for the growth rate, whichever is larger. Thus, the model formalizes the conjecture that epizodes of inflation rates in excess of the Friedman solution are attributable to high discounts rates for future seigniorage. Adding aversion to high expected inflation to the model, this analysis also rationalizes the observation that inflation rates are usually less than Friedman's elasticity solution.

Sovereign Debt as a Contingent Claim: Excusable Default, Repudiation, and Reputation

History suggests the following stylized facts about default on sovereign debt:(1) Defaults are associated with identifiably bad states of the world. (2) Defaults are usually partial, rather than complete.(3) Sovereign states usually are able to borrow again soon after a default. Motivated by these facts, this paper analyses a reputational equilibrium in a model that interprets sovereign debts as contingent claims that both finance investments and facilitate risk shifting. Loans are a useful device to facilitate risk shifting because they permit the prepayment of indemnities. Nevertheless, because the power to abrogate commitments without having to answer to a higher enforcement authority is an essential aspect of sovereignty, a decision by a sovereign to validate lender expectations about debt servicing depends on the sovereign's concern for its trust worthy reputation. A trustworthy reputationis valuable because it provides continued access to loans. A key aspect of the analysis is that lenders differentiate excusable default, which is associated with implicitly understood contingencies, from unjustifiable repudiation. In the reputational equilibrium, the short-run benefits from repudiation are smaller than the long-run costs from loss of a trustworthy reputation. Thus, although sovereigns sometimes excusably default, they never repudiate their debts. The reputational equilibrium can involve efficient risk shifting and efficient investment or it can involve a binding lending ceiling that limits risk shifting and can also restrict investment. The factors that tend to produce a binding lending ceiling include a high time discount rate for the sovereign, low-risk aversion forthe sovereign, and a low net return from the sovereign's investments.

Measuring Strategic Uncertainty in Coordination Games

Lecture on the first SFB/TR 15 meeting, Gummersbach, July, 18 - 20, 2004This paper explores predictability of behavior in coordination games with multiple equilibria. In a laboratory experiment we measure subjects' certainty equivalents for three coordination games and one lottery. Attitudes towards strategic uncertainty in coordination games are related to risk aversion, experience seeking, gender and age. From the distribution of certainty equivalents among participating students we estimate probabilities for successful coordination in a wide range of coordination games. For many games success of coordination is predictable with a reasonable error rate. The best response of a risk neutral player is close to the global-game solution. Comparing choices in coordination games with revealed risk aversion, we estimate subjective probabilities for successful coordination. In games with a low coordination requirement, most subjects underestimate the probability of success. In games with a high coordination requirement, most subjects overestimate this probability. Data indicate that subjects have probabilistic beliefs about success or failure of coordination rather than beliefs about individual behavior of other players

Coordination and transfer

We study the ability of subjects to transfer principles between related coordination games. Subjects play a class of order statistic coordination games closely related to the well-known minimum (or weak-link) and median games (Van Huyck et al. in Am Econ Rev 80:234–248, 1990, Q J Econ 106(3):885–910, 1991). When subjects play a random sequence of games with differing order statistics, play is less sensitive to the order statistic than when a fixed order statistic is used throughout. This is consistent with the prediction of a simple learning model with transfer. If subjects play a series of similar stag hunt games, play converges to the payoff dominant equilibrium when a convention emerges, replicating the main result of Rankin et al. (Games Econ Behav 32:315–337, 2000). When these subjects subsequently play a random sequence of order statistic games, play is shifted towards the payoff dominant equilibrium relative to subjects without previous experience. The data is consistent with subjects absorbing a general principle, play of the payoff dominant equilibrium, and applying it in a new related setting

The Effects of Social Ties on Coordination: Conceptual Foundations for an Empirical Analysis

International audienceThis paper investigates the influence that social ties can have on behavior. After defining the concept of social ties that we consider, we introduce an original model of social ties. The impact of such ties on social preferences is studied in a coordination game with outside option. We provide a detailed game theoretical analysis of this game while considering various types of players, i.e., self-interest maximizing, inequity averse, and fair agents. In addition to these approaches that require strategic reasoning in order to reach some equilibrium, we also present an alternative hypothesis that relies on the concept of team reasoning. After having discussed the differences between the latter and our model of social ties, we show how an experiment can be designed so as to discriminate among the models presented in the paper

The Economic Consequences of Social-Network Structure

We survey the literature on the economic consequences of the structure of social networks. We develop a taxonomy of "macro" and "micro" characteristics of social-interaction networks and discuss both the theoretical and empirical findings concerning the role of those characteristics in determining learning, diffusion, decisions, and resulting behaviors. We also discuss the challenges of accounting for the endogeneity of networks in assessing the relationship between the patterns of interactions and behaviors