Games with vector-valued payoffs and their application to competition between organizations

In 1959, Lloyd Shapley wrote a short paper on games with vector payoffs. He analyzed zero-sum matrix games. Here, we extend Shapley's equilibrium concept to general games with vector payoffs, introduce an organizational interpretation of the concept, elaborate the relationship of the original concept to another equilibrium concept where each player can be viewed as running a bargaining game among internal ‘factions,'' and finally comment upon its relationship to the concept of party unanimity Nash equilibrium (PUNE).

Political Competition (A theory with applications to the distribution of income)

The formal model of political competition almost ubiquitously employed by students of political economy is one in which political parties play no role. That model, introduced by Anthony Downs (1957) over forty years ago, portrays a competition between candidates, whose sole motivation for engaging in politics is to enjoy the power and perquisites of office holding. Although voters care about policies, the candidates do not; for them, a policy is simply an instrument to be used, opportunistically, as an entry ticket to a prosperous career. Political parties, however, have, throughout the history of democracy, cared about policies, perhaps because they are formed by interest groups of citizens. Therefore the Downsian model cannot be viewed as an historically accurate model of party competition.

"What we owe our children, they their children, and..."

Egalitarian theorists, since Rawls, have in the main advocated equalizing some objective standard of individual well-being, such as primary goods, functioning, or resources, rather than subjective welfare. This discussion, however, has assumed, implicitly, a static environment, with a single or perhaps a small number of generations. By studying the problem of equality of opportunity in a society that survives for many generations, we demonstrate that equality of opportunity for some objective condition of individuals is incompatible with a natural notion of human development over time. We argue that this incompatibility can be resolved by equalizing opportunities for welfare. Thus, â??subjectivismâ?? seems necessary if we are to hope for a society which can both equalize opportunities and support the development of human capacity over time.

Equity in health care delivery and finance

Much has happened in the theory of distributive justice during the last 30 years, in the period, roughly, since Rawls published his magisterial work1. As occurs in most fields following a great contribution, that work has been subjected to critique, amended and ramified, so that what Rawls proposed now appears as an early ancestor of contemporary theories of distributive justice, or equity. In this paper, I locate what I think is the main trend in this developing theory, and then to try to apply the theory to the issue of health.

Indeterminacy of Citizen-Candidate Equilibrium

In a citizen candidate equilibrium, there are n candidates each of whom announces a policy in a policy space of dimension d. Thus the policy equilibrium lives in a space of dimension nd. We show, in a canonical example, that the equilibrium manifold is generically of dimension nd. In particular, the set of equilibria contains an open set in T^n .Citizen-candidate equilibrium, Political equilibrium

Distribution and Politics: A Brief History and Prospect

A brief, historical review of the study of the interdependency between politics and economic distribution is offered. While the impact of economic interests on politics has been acknowledged for thousands of years, and the impact of politics on distribution for hundreds, it is only in the last thirty years that formal models of the interdependency between economic distribution and politics have been formulated. A general model of political-economic equilibrium is proposed, in which political competition and economic distribution jointly determine each other. Several examples are given. The author proposes that political economy, conceived of as studying this process of joint determination, is in its infancy.Political-economic equilibrium

Value and Politics

A brief, historical review of the study of the interdependency between politics and economic distribution is offered. While the impact of economic interests on politics has been acknowledged for thousands of years, and the impact of politics on distribution for hundreds, it is only in the last thirty years that formal models of the interdependency between economic distribution and politics have been formulated. A general model of political-economic equilibrium is proposed, in which political competition and economic distribution jointly determine each other. Several examples are given. The author proposes that political economy, conceived of as studying this process of joint determination, is in its infancy.Political-economic equilibrium

Egalitarianism against the Veil of Ignorance

J. Rawls and R. Dworkin have each used veils of ignorance to justify equality (Rawls) or to compute what equality entails (Dworkin). J. Harsanyi has also derived a distributive ethic from a veil of ignorance argument, which, although not egalitarian, is believed by Harsanyi to be not excessively inegalitarian. Harsanyi's analysis does not determine a unique social choice function, but rather a family of such functions. Here, by appending more information to Harsanyi's environment, and an Axiom of Neutrality, I uniquely determine a social welfare function by extending Harsanyi's argument. I show that this function is strongly inegalitarian, in that it recommends resource transfers from disabled to able individuals. Some concluding remarks are offered against using the veil of ignorance in studying the distributive ethics.Harsanyi, Dworkin, Rawls

Values and Politics in the US: An Equilibrium Analysis of the 2004 Election

The CNN exit polls after the 2004 election rated ‘moral values’ the most important issue; next came ‘jobs and the economy.’ Eighty percent of the voters who rated moral values the most important issue voted for Bush while eighty percent of the voters who rated jobs and the economy the most important voted for Kerry. We study the extent to which the distribution of voter opinion on moral values influences the positions that parties take on the economic issue, which we take to be the size of the public sector, through political competition. There are at least two distinct ways this influence might occur. First, because the Republican Party is identified with a traditionalist stance on moral values, some voters who desire a large public sector may nevertheless vote Republican because traditionalist morality is important for them. This we call the policy bundle effect. Second, it may be the case that those who subscribe to a traditionalist morality take economic conservatism to be part of that view, in the sense that they view the state as, for instance, usurping the role of the individual and/or family. We call this effect the moral Puritanism effect. Thus economic conservatism in the US may be politically strengthened by moral traditionalism because the Republican Party links the two issues (policy bundle) or because moral traditionalists in the US are anti-statist (in the Puritan sense). Our analysis will enable us to predict how equilibrium policies proposed by Democratic and Republican Parties would change if all voters had the same view on the moral-values issue, and we will decompose these changes into the aforementioned two effects. JEL Categories: D3, D7, H2moral values, redistribution, moral Puritanism effect, policy bundle effect, party unanimity Nash equilibrium

Endogennous party formation and the effect of income distribution on policy.

We develop a model of spatial political competition with ideological parties and uncertainty. The political issue is the income tax rate and the amount of a public good. The ideology of each party is determine endogenously. We show that the tax rate does not coincide with the ideal policy of the median voter. Moreover, the tax rate is not increasing in the di¤erence between the mean income and the median income.Party formation; Redistribution; Growth;