Analogy-based Expectations and the Partially Cursed Equilibrium

Recent literature has questioned the existence of a learning foundation for the partially cursed equilibrium. This paper closes the gap by showing that a partially cursed equilibrium corresponds to a particular analogy-based expectation equilibrium.Analogy Expectations; Bounded Rationality; Curse; Learning

Contracts and Promises - An Approach to Pre-play Agreements

In line with the widely applied principle of just deserts, we assume that the severity of the penalty on a contract offender increases in the harm on the other. When this principle holds, the influence of the efficiency of the agreement on the incentives to abide by it crucially depends on whether actions are strategic complements or substitutes. With strategic substitutes, there is a conflict between Pareto-efficiency and the incentives to abide. The opposite tends to be true when actions are strategic complements. The results are interpreted in the context of legal contracts and in that of informal mutual promises.partnerships; contracts; pre-play communication; legal enforcement; social norms; guilt

Moral Hazard and Clear Conscience

The paper studies theoretically how the optimal contract in the hidden-action moral hazard model is affected when an agent feels bad when not reaching a target effort set in the contract. While the presence of guilt brings the outcome closer to first-best, an effort target is not costless for the principal. In equilibrium, the agent’s effort falls short of the target, inducing guilt which must be compensated by a higher financial reward. Thus, although the principal’s payoff is higher, the agent receives a part of the monetary rents accruing to intrinsic motivation. This result differs markedly from previous contributions on contracting under social preference or pro-social motivation.Moral Hazard; Norms; Agency; Social Preferences; Guilt; Work Ethic

Political Parties and Network Formation

We argue that anticorruption laws may provide an efficiency rationale for why political parties should meddle in the distribution of political nominations and government contracts. Anticorruption laws forbid trade in spoils that politicians distribute. However, citizens may pay for gaining access to politicians and, thereby, to become potential candidates for nominations. Such rent-seeking results in excessive network formation. Political parties may reduce wasteful network formation, thanks to their ability to enter into exclusive membership contracts. This holds even though anticorruption laws also bind political parties.political parties, two-sided platforms, rent-seeking, network formation

Commitment in Alternating Offers Bargaining

We extend the Ståhl-Rubinstein alternating-offer bargaining procedure to allow players, prior to each bargaining round, to simultaneously and visibly commit to some share of the pie. If commitment costs are small but increasing in the committed share, then the unique outcome consistent with common belief in future rationality (Perea, 2009), or more restrictively subgame perfect Nash equilibrium, exhibits a second mover advantage. In particular, as the smallest share of the pie approaches zero, the horizon approaches in…nity, and commitment costs approach zero, the unique bargaining outcome corresponds to the reversed Rubinstein outcome (d/(1 + d); 1/(1 + d)).alternating offer bargaining; bargaining power; commitment; epistemic game theory; patience

Analogy-based expectations and the partially cursed equilibrium

Recent literature has questioned the existence of a learning foundation for the partially cursed equilibrium. This paper closes the gap by showing that a partially cursed equilibrium corresponds to a particular analogy-based expectation equilibrium

Contracts and promises: an approach to pre-play agreements

In line with the widely applied principle of just deserts, we assume that the severity of the penalty on a contract offender increases in the harm on the other. When this principle holds, the influence of the efficiency of the agreement on the incentives to abide by it crucially depends on whether actions are strategic complements or substitutes. With strategic substitutes, there is a conflict between Pareto-efficiency and the incentives to abide. The opposite tends to be true when actions are strategic complements. The results are interpreted in the context of legal contracts and in that of informal mutual promises

Learning foundation for the cursed equilibrium

Recent literature has questioned the existence of a learning foundation for the partially cursed equilibrium. This paper closes the gap by showing that a partially cursed equilibrium corresponds to a particular analogy-based expectation equilibrium

Moral hazard and clear conscience

We consider guilt averse agents and principals and study the effects of guilt on optimal behavior of the principal and the agent in a moral hazard model. The principals contract proposal contains a target effort in addition to the monetary incentive scheme. By accepting the agreement, the parties agree on both the wage scheme and the target. The agent suffers from guilt when failing to provide the target effort, the principal when paying less than the contract requires or when setting an unreasonably high target effort. In equilibrium, a guilt-prone agent chooses a higher effort than an agent who only cares about monetary incentives. The target effort level is always set above the equilibrium effort. Both the agent and the principal gain from the agents guilt aversion. A principal who lacks power to commit to the proposed incentive scheme benefits from having a positive proneness to guilt. However, a guilt-prone principal who suffers when setting an unreasonable target is worse off than one with merely monetary motivations