coordinating regime switches the canonical model of strategic complementarities between individual actions which exhibits multiple equilibria under perfect information is extended with heterogeneous agents and imperfect information agents observe their own cost of action and the history of the levels of aggregate activity the distribution of individual characteristics evolves through a random process and individuals are rational bayesians under plausible conditions there is a unique equilibrium with phases of high and low activity and random switches applications may be found in macroeconomics and revolutions

diffusing coordination risk in a regime change game privately informed agents sequentially decide whether to attack without observing others previous actions to dissuade them from attacking a principal adopts a dynamic information disclosure policy frequent viability tests a viability test publicly discloses whether the regime has survived the previous attacks when such tests are sufficiently frequent in the unique cutoff equilibrium agents never attack if the regime passes the latest test regardless of their private signals we apply this theory to demonstrate that a borrower can eliminate panic based runs by sufficiently diffusing the rollover choices across different maturity dates

conflict and deterrence under strategic risk we examine the determinants of cooperation and the effectiveness of deterrence when fear is a motive for conflict we contrast results obtained in a complete information setting with those obtained in a setting with strategic risk where players have different information about their environment these two strategic settings allow us to identify and distinguish the role of predatory and preemptive incentives as determinants of cooperation and conflict in our model weapons unambiguously facilitate peace under complete information in contrast under strategic risk we show that increases in weapon stocks can have a nonmonotonic effect on the sustainability of cooperation we also show that under strategic risk asymmetry in military strength can facilitate peace and that anticipated peacekeeping interventions may improve incentives for peaceful behavior

uniform selection in global games abstract this paper brings together results which are required in order to extend the global games approach to settings where the game structure is endogenous more precisely it shows that the selection argument of carlsson and van damme global games and equilibrium selection econometrica 61 5 1993 989 1018 holds uniformly over appropriately controlled families of games those results also give proper justification for the inversion of limits which is often implicit in applied work taking comparative statics on the selected risk dominant equilibrium

housework wages and the division of housework time for employed spouses while the popular press may have declared housework passe with the advent of the two income household see housework is obsolescent by barbara ehrenreich 1993 for one such example the facts indicate that housework continues to consume a substantial amount of time particularly for women while estimates vary widely depending on the sample examined and the methods used to generate the information representative values of housework time range around 6 14 hours per week for men and 20 30 hours for women since wages are likely to be influenced both directly and indirectly by the time and effort devoted to other activities and since gender differences in household responsibilities are significant and often assumed to be a driving force behind gender earnings differentials decisions regarding the overall amount of time spent on housework and the division of that time within the household are important ones the goal of this paper is to shed some light on these allocation decisions we begin by discussing the various methods by which time and effort spent on housework may affect wages and summarize the available empirical evidence overall the empirical evidence indicates that time spent on housework has a negative effect on wages an effect which is most pronounced for women we next examine the amount of time spent on housework and the division of that time between working spouses to do so we draw upon the human capital literature and the bargaining literature to construct simple regression equations for time spent on housework by each spouse as well as the share of housework time contributed by the husband the results indicate that husbands do less housework than their wives as their relative earnings and hours spent in the labor market increase

dynamic global games of regime change learning multiplicity and the timing of attacks global games of regime change coordination games of incomplete information in which a status quo is abandoned once a sufficiently large fraction of agents attack it have been used to study crises phenomena such as currency attacks bank runs debt crises and political change we extend the static benchmark examined in the literature by allowing agents to take actions in many periods and to learn about the underlying fundamentals over time we first provide a simple recursive algorithm for the characterization of monotone equilibria we then show how the interaction of the knowledge that the regime survived past attacks with the arrival of information over time or with changes in fundamentals leads to interesting equilibrium properties first multiplicity may obtain under the same conditions on exogenous information that guarantee uniqueness in the static benchmark second fundamentals may predict the eventual fate of the regime but not the timing or the number of attacks finally equilibrium dynamics can alternate between phases of tranquility where no attack is possible and phases of distress where a large attack can occur even without changes in fundamentals

commercial energy subsidies in developing countries opportunity for reform abstract energy subsidies are still pervasive in many developing countries oil exporters heavily subsidize all domestic oil consumption while several importers subsidize particular petroleum products estimates of foregone revenues in the oil exporting countries approximate one third of all oil export revenues finally subsidies for electricity natural gas and coal are even more pervasive in virtually all of the countries studies the prices of these fuels do not reflect marginal costs

fear of miscoordination and the robustness of cooperation in dynamic global games with exit this paper develops a framework to assess how fear of miscoordination affects the sustainability of cooperation building on theoretical insights from carlsson and van damme 1993 it explores the effect of small amounts of private information on a class of dynamic cooperation games with exit lack of common knowledge leads players to second guess each other s behavior and makes coordination difficult this restricts the range of equilibria and highlights the role of miscoordination payoffs in determining whether cooperation is sustainable or not the paper characterizes the range of perfect bayesian equilibria as the players information becomes arbitrarily precise unlike in one shot two by two games the global games information structure does not yield equilibrium uniqueness

the role of preferences and opportunity costs in determining the time allocated to housework the time devoted to housework in couple households is substantial research on intrahousehold time allocations has generally assumed that housework is a necessary evil and that the partner with the lower opportunity cost of time in the market will devote more time to home production in reality households individuals are likely motivated to maximize happiness and preferences regarding even mundane household chores differ considerably we use information on preferences opportunity costs and time use from the 2000 2001 united kingdom time use survey to examine the time partners spend doing laundry ironing cleaning and food shopping while compared with other household chores such as gardening and do it yourself repairs the selected activities are generally less enjoyable preferences do vary across the population and are correlated with reported time use joint multivariate analysis of his and her time on weekend and weekday days as well as maid service reveals that her opportunity cost of time matters substantially more than his but that his preferences play a greater role than hers

the folk theorem with imperfect public information the authors study repeated games in which players observe a public outcome that imperfectly signals the actions played they provide conditions guaranteeing that any feasible individually rational payoff vector of the stage game can arise as a perfect equilibrium of the repeated game with sufficiently little discounting the central condition requires that there exist action profiles with the property that for any two players no two deviations one by either player give rise to the same probability distribution over public outcomes the results apply to principal agent partnership oligopoly and mechanism design models and to one shot games with transferable utilities copyright 1994 by the econometric society

communication in repeated games with imperfect private monitoring this paper examines repeated games in which each player observes a private and imperfect signal on the actions played and in which players are allowed to communicate using public messages providing incentives for players to reveal their observations generates revelation constraints that combined with signal imperfections may be a source of inefficiencies however by delaying the revelation of their observations players may economize on the cost of deterring deviations and thereby avoid these inefficiencies because a player would not want to trigger a sanction that would penalize him too revelation constraints also tend to make sanctions difficult to enforce however with at least three players detecting deviations may not require that all the players reveal their observations in that case we obtain a nash threat version of the folk theorem with two players we do not obtain a similar result nevertheless we show that an efficient outcome can almost always be approximated

the emergence of political accountability when and how do democratic institutions deliver accountable government in addressing this broad question we focus on the role played by political norms specifically the extent to which leaders abuse office for personal gain and the extent to which citizens punish such transgressions we show how qualitatively distinct political norms can coexist because of a dynamic complementarity in which citizens willingness to punish transgressions is raised when they expect such punishments to be used in the future we seek to understand the emergence of accountability by analysing transitions between norms to do so we extend the analysis to include the possibility that at certain times a segment of voters are behaviorally intolerant of transgressions our mechanism highlights the role of leaders offering an account of how their actions can instigate enduring change within a fixed set of formal institutions by disrupting prevailing political norms we show how such changes do not depend on sun spots to trigger coordination and are asymmetric in effect a series of good leaders can and eventually will improve norms whereas bad leaders cannot damage them jel codes d72 p16 c73 copyright 2013 oxford university press

recovering hicksian consumer surplus within a collective model hausman s method for the household the purpose of this paper is to describe the implications of the collective model of household behavior for the methods used to estimate the economic value of non marketed environmental resources after demonstrating how the separability restrictions inherent in the collective model allow individual preference and household income allocation choices to be distinguished the paper demonstrates how the framework can be used to recover hicksian consumer surplus an algebraic example is used to illustrate how the framework can be used in valuing environmental resources

tractable dynamic global games and applications abstract we present a family of tractable dynamic global games and its applications agents privately learn about a fixed fundamental and repeatedly adjust their investments while facing frictions the game exhibits many externalities payoffs may depend on the volume of investment on its volatility and on its concentration the solution is driven by an invariance result aggregate investment is in a pivotal contingency invariant to a large family of frictions we use the invariance result to examine how frictions including those similar to the tobin tax affect equilibrium we identify conditions under which frictions discourage harmful behavior without compromising investment volume

maids appliances and couples housework the demand for inputs to domestic production maids household appliances and housework time are key inputs to domestic production this study uses data from the uk and france to estimate the effects of resource prices on the demand for these inputs we conclude that higher opportunity costs of time increase the likelihood of having maid services and appliances women s time costs are also positively related to his housework time and negatively related to hers finally maid service appears to be a closer substitute for housework time on weekend days than weekdays suggesting smaller labour supply effects than anticipated by earlier literature abstract from author

optimal cartel equilibria with imperfect monitoring abstract there exist optimal symmetric equilibria in the green porter model 4 8 having an elementary intertemporal structure such an equilibrium is described entirely by two subsets of price space and two quantities the only production levels used by firms in any contingency the central technique employed in the analysis is the reduction of the repeated game to a family of static games

labour supply and commuting abstract we examine the effect of commuting distance on workers labour supply patterns distinguishing between weekly labour supply number of workdays per week and daily labour supply we account for endogeneity of distance by using employer induced changes in distance in germany distance has a slight positive effect on daily and weekly labour supply but no effect on the number of workdays the effect of distance on labour supply patterns is stronger for female workers but it is still small

contract structure risk sharing and investment choice few microfinance funded businesses grow beyond subsistence entrepreneurship this paper considers one possible explanation that the structure of existing microfinance contracts may discourage risky but high expected return investments to explore this possibility i develop a theory that unifies models of investment choice informal risk sharing and formal financial contracts i then test the predictions of this theory using a series of experiments with clients of a large microfinance institution in india the experiments confirm the theoretical predictions that joint liability creates two potential inefficiencies first borrowers free ride on their partners making risky investments without compensating partners for this risk second the addition of peer monitoring overcompensates leading to sharp reductions in risk taking and profitability equity like financing in which partners share both the benefits and risks of more profitable projects overcomes both of these inefficiencies and merits further testing in the field

collective action with uncertain payoffs coordination public signals and punishment dilemmas how can one analyze collective action in protests or revolutions when individuals are uncertain about the relative payoffs of the status quo and revolution we model a calculus of protest of individuals who must either submit to the status quo or support revolt based only on personal information about their payoffs in deciding whether to revolt the citizen must infer both the benefit of successful revolution and the likely actions of other citizens we characterize conditions under which payoff uncertainty overturns conventional wisdom a when a citizen is too willing to revolt he reduces the incentives of others to revolt b less accurate information about the value of revolution can make revolt more likely c public signals from other citizens can reduce the likelihood of revolt d harsher punishment can increase the incidence of punishment and e the incidence of protest can be positively correlated with that of repression

efficient ex ante stabilization of firms abstract distressed firms are vulnerable to inefficient panic based runs of their workers suppliers and customers a policymaker may try to prevent such a run by pledging to protect the interests of these stakeholders should a firm cease to do business however this promise also enables the firm to demand better terms of trade from its stakeholders which blunts the policy s effectiveness we show how to avoid such an adverse response by the use of partial countercyclical insurance under certain conditions such a scheme costlessly implements the first best outcome in the limit as the stakeholders information becomes precise we also identify least cost efficient schemes in the cases of large noise learning and duopoly

intertemporal coordination with delay options abstract this paper studies equilibrium selection in intertemporal coordination problems with delay options the risk dominant action of the underlying one shot game is selected when frictions are arbitrarily small larger frictions introduce real option effects in the model and inhibit coordination

heterogeneity and stability bolster the strong not the weak we first study a stylized model of self fulfilling panic among agents with differing fragilities to strategic risk and show that depending on the severity of coordination problems the panic trigger threshold can depend only on one type s fragility we then present a model of systemic panic among financial institutions with heterogeneous fragilities to financial spillovers concerns about potential spillovers generate strategic interaction triggering a pre emption game in which one tries to exit the market before others to avoid spillovers although financial contagion originates in weaker institutions systemic risk can critically depend on financial health of stronger in the contagion chain in this case bolstering the strong rather than the weak more effectively enhances systemic stability

defensive weapons and defensive alliances we examine the effects of defensive weapons and their interaction with preemption in a complete information setting where attacks only occur as a consequence of predatory incentives a unilateral acquisition of defensive weapons always destabilizes under strategic risk where players might launch preemptive strikes defensive weapons can help sustain peace however this only happens when such defensive systems are much more effective against a sneak attack than in an open war otherwise defensive weapons are likely to also be destabilizing we contrast these results with the effect of signing defensive alliances which unambiguously bolsters the prospects of peace in both strategic settings

an example of a repeated partnership game with discounting and with uniformly inefficient equilibria in this note we present an example of a repeated partnership game with imperfect monitoring in which all supergame equilibria with positive discount rates are bounded away from full efficiency uniformly in the discount rate provided the latter is strictly positive on the other hand if the players do not discount the future then every efficient one period payoff vector that dominates the one period equilibrium payoff vector can be attained by an equilibrium of the repeated game thus the correspondence that maps the players discount rate into the corresponding set of repeated game equilibrium payoff vectors is discontinuous at the point at which the discount rate is zero

monotone comparative statics under uncertainty this paper analyzes monotone comparative statics predictions in several classes of stochastic optimization problems the main results characterize necessary and sufficient conditions for comparative statics predictions to hold based on properties of primitive functions that is utility functions and probability distributions the results apply when the primitives satisfy one of the following two properties i a single crossing property which arises in applications such as portfolio investment problems and auctions or ii log supermodularity which arises in the analysis of demand functions affiliated random variables stochastic orders and orders over risk aversion

rationalizability learning and equilibrium in games with strategic complementarities we study a rich class of noncooperative games that includes models of oligopoly competition macroeconomic coordination failures arms races bank runs technology adoption and diffusion r d competition pretrial bargaining coordination in teams and many others for all these games the sets of pure strategy nash equilibria correlated equilibria and rationalizable strategies have identical bounds also for a class of models of dynamic adaptive choice behavior that encompasses both best response dynamics and bayesian learning the players choices lie eventually within the same bounds these bounds are shown to vary monotonically with certain exogenous parameters we study the class of noncooperative supermodular games introduced by topkis 1979 and further analyzed by vives 1985 1989 who also pointed out the importance of these games in industrial economics supermodular games are games in which each player s strategy set is partially ordered the marginal returns to increasing one s strategy rise with increases in the competitors strategies so that the game exhibits strategic complementarity 2 and if a player s strategies are multidimensional marginal returns to any one com ponent of the player s strategy rise with increases in the other components this class turns out to encompass many of the most important economic applications of noncooperative game theory in macroeconomics diamond s 1982 search model and bryant s 1983 1984 rational expectations models can be represented as supermodular games in each of these models more activity by some members of the economy raises the returns to increased levels of activity by others in oligopoly theory some models of bertrand oligopoly with differentiated products qualify as supermodu lar games in these games when a firm s competitors raise their prices the marginal profitability of the firm s own price increase rises a similar structure is present in games of new technology adoption such as those of dybvig and spatt 1983 farrell and saloner 1986 and katz and shapiro 1986 when more users hook into a communication system or more manufacturers adopt an interface standard the marginal return to others of doing the same often rises similarly in some specifications of the bank runs model introduced by diamond and dybvig 1983 when more depositors withdraw their funds from a bank it is more worthwhile for other depositors to do the same in the warrant exercise

co ordination spillovers and cheap talk abstract we analyze the role of cheap talk in two player games with one sided incomplete information we identify conditions under which 1 players can fully communicate and coordinate on efficient nash equilibria of the underlying complete information game and 2 players cannot communicate so cheap talk does not alter the equilibrium set of the bayesian game we present examples that illustrate several issues that arise when there is two sided incomplete information journal of economic literature classification numbers c72 d82

commuting and labour supply revisited according to theory road pricing may reduce welfare when labour supply is negatively distorted by an income tax this effect particularly occurs when commuting costs reduce labour supply we examine the hypothesis that commuting costs reduce labour supply in the short run in particular we estimate the effect of commuting time on labour supply in the uk we account for endogeneity of commuting time by employing exogenous changes in commuting time resulting from firm relocations and changes in infrastructure our results cast doubt on the idea that increases in commuting cost reduce labour supply at least in the short run more precisely we find that females labour supply reacts positively to or is unaffected by increases in commuting time whereas males labour supply is unaffected