communication networks in markets abstract this paper proposes and tests experimentally a dynamic model of bargaining to analyze decentralized markets where buyers and sellers obtain information about past deals through their social network there is a unique equilibrium in which every individual obtains the same outcome independent of their network position and this outcome depends on the peripheral least connected individuals in the network the main testable predictions are that networks with high density and or low variability in the number of connections across individuals allow their members to obtain a better deal these predictions are tested in a lab experiment through 4 treatments that vary the network that subjects are assigned to the results of the experiment lend support to the theoretical predictions subjects converge to an outcome that is independent of their network position and they fare better if they are assigned to a network that is dense and or has low variability in number of connections across members

risk coping land tenure and land markets an overview of the literature over the last decades a significant amount of literature has been published on informal risk coping in developing countries in this paper we review how informal risk coping has been addressed in the land tenure literature from two main perspectives a first stream of research looks at how customary tenure and communal property perform key informal risk coping functions a second subset of this literature analyses how informal risk coping creates land market imperfections through sharecropping or distress sales the segmentation of the literature results from the demsetzian property rights framework further research on risk coping and land tenure would benefit from examining recent work on property regimes

more on the employment effects of innovation abstract this article argues the lack of relevance to reality of the hall heffernan model specifies a model that makes the issue clear and extends beyond hagen 1982 the discussion of technological disemployment and re employment

an evolutionary model of bargaining abstract individuals from two populations of bargainers are randomly matched to play the nash demand game they make their demands by choosing best replies based on an incomplete knowledge of the precedents and occasionally they choose randomly there is no common knowledge over the long run typically one division will be observed almost all of the time this stochastically stable division is close to the nash solution when all agents in the same population are alike when the populations are heterogeneous a generalization of the nash solution results if there is some mixing between the two populations the stable division is fifty fifty journal of economic literature classification number c78

stochastic adaptation in finite games played by heterogeneous populations we analyze stochastic adaptation in finite n player games played by heterogeneous populations containing best repliers better repliers and imitators individuals select strategies by applying a

technological disemployment and economic growth abstract very little early technical advance effects export expansion or import substitution because technological disemployment that much misunderstood process accompanies it that advance increases aggregate income little but merely concentrates it in fewer hands without continuing exogenous increase in aggregate demand there will be little growth this thesis is believed basic to understanding of economic growth corollaries relate to export led growth population growth and the trend during growth in the distribution of income

land ownership as insurance and the market for land a study in rural vietnam we propose simple empirical insights to analyze the relationship between the value of the safety net embedded in land and households decision to sell land land sales may differ from other kinds of land transactions such as rental free loans and gifts in terms of future capacities to safeguard livelihood households well insured through nonland riskcoping mechanisms are expected to make use of sales more frequently than others we test this hypothesis with 2006 survey data from vietnam and find that selling households are less vulnerable better educated and richer than those that use other transfer types

a prospect theory nash bargaining solution and its stochastic stability abstract we consider the long run outcomes of bargaining games when players obey prospect theory we extend the evolutionary bargaining model of young 1993 to a two stage nash demand game two players simultaneously choose whether to exercise an outside option in the first stage and play the nash demand game in the second stage which will be reached only if neither player exercises the outside option we address the influence on the stochastically stable division of reference dependent preferences where the reference point is the value of the outside option we show that the division consistently differs from the nash bargaining solution under expected utility theory inspired by this we propose a prospect theory nash bargaining solution which coincides with the stochastically stable division

clever agents in adaptive learning abstract saez marti and weibull j econom theory 86 1999 268 investigate the consequences of letting some agents play a myopic best reply to the myopic best reply in young s j econom theory 59 1993 145 bargaining model which is how they introduce cleverness of players i analyze such clever agents in general finite two player games and show young s individual strategy and social structure princeton university press princeton nj 1998 prediction to be robust adaptive learning with clever agents does select the same minimal curb set as in the absence of clever agents if their population share is less than one however the long run strategy distribution in such a curb set may vary with the share of clever agents

stochastic stability under logit choice in coalitional bargaining problems abstract this study examines a dynamic process of n person coalitional bargaining problems we investigate the evolution of social conventions by embedding a coalitional bargaining setting in a dynamic process in each period a group of players may make some coalitional move that is forming a new team or negotiating the division of a surplus players revise their coalitions and surplus divisions over time in the presence of stochastic noise which leads players to make a suboptimal decision under a logit specification of choice probabilities we find that the stability of a core allocation decreases in the wealth of the richest player furthermore stochastically stable allocations are core allocations that minimize the wealth of the richest player

conflict leads to cooperation in demand bargaining abstract we consider a multilateral nash demand game in which short sighted players come to the bargaining table with requests for both coalition partners and the potentially generated resource we prove that the resulting process converges with probability one to a state in which all players agree on a strictly self enforcing division of resources i e a strict core allocation highlighting group dynamics we show how the myopic actions of players may lead to the break up of groups in the short run but can ultimately bring about a situation from which a strictly self enforcing allocation can be reached

does evolution solve the hold up problem abstract the paper examines the theoretical foundations of the hold up problem at the first stage one agent decides on the level of a relationship specific investment there is no contract so at the second stage the agent must bargain with a trading partner over the surplus that the investment has generated we show that the conventional underinvestment result hinges crucially both on the assumed bargaining game and on the choice of equilibrium concept in particular we prove the following two results i if bargaining proceeds according to the nash demand game any investment level is subgame perfect but only a particular efficient outcome is stochastically stable ii if bargaining proceeds according to the ultimatum game with the trading partner as proposer only the minimal investment level is subgame perfect but any investment level is stochastically stable journal of economic literature classification numbers l14 c78

the development of a land market insights from cote d ivoire this paper contributes to the debate on rural land sales in africa first it shows that the emergence of sales in the forested area of cote d ivoire corresponds to an imperfect land commoditization due to the social embedding of land transfers in the autochthon migrant relationship then it analyzes land sales in a former no man s land outside this relationship where the transactions correspond to complete sales however a diachronic analysis reveals an involution in the market related to the transformation of the pioneer s individual private right into a family right once the land is inherited highlighting therefore another social dimension of land markets 2006 by the board of regents of the university of wisconsin system

what really caused the great recession rhyme and repetition in a theme from the 1930s diagnoses of the 2008 financial crisis have invoked arguments involving real sector developments that though much debated in the 1930s had largely disappeared from the literature in recent decades prompted by these revivals the present study re examines an inter war conviction that the depression had its origins in uneven technological progress and monopolistic competition effectively reversing the induced roundaboutness view of the austrian thesis these writings noted a conflict between the resulting need for monetary accommodation and its potentially destabilising distributional consequences a common framework permits the extent of similarity in inter war and contemporary american experience to be assessed with the comparison drawing attention to the 1990s nasdaq boom and the subsequent financial behaviour of the us corporate sector consistently with the earlier literature but contrary to recent conclusions financial sector excess is seen as an aggravating factor rather than an initiating cause of the recession

toward a theory of induced institutional innovation in this paper we elaborate a theory of institutional innovation in which changes in the demand for institutional innovation are induced by changes in relative resource endowments and by technical change we illustrate from agricultural history how changes in resource endowments and technical change have induced changes in private property rights and in the development of non market institutions we also consider the impact of advances in social science knowledge and of cultural endowments on the supply of institutional change in a final section we present the elements of a model of institutional innovation that maps the relationships among resource endowments cultural endowments technology and institutions

altruistic versus egoistic behavior in a public good game this paper analyzes an evolutionary version of the public good game in which boundedly rational agents can use imitation and best reply decision rules several possibilities for both decision rules to be present in the population are considered i show that altruistic behavior might survive if switching between the decision rules occurs less often than the probabilities of errors in choosing a strategy and if local neighborhoods are not too small or too large

clever agents in young s evolutionary bargaining model in the models of young 1993 econometrica61 57 84 1993 j econ theory59 145 168 boundedly rational individuals are recurrently matched to play a game and they play myopic best replies to the recent history of play it could therefore be an advantage to instead play a myopic best reply to the myopic best reply something boundedly rational players might conceivably also do we investigate this possibility in the context of young s j econ theory59 145 168 bargaining model it turns out that cleverness in this respect indeed does have an advantage in some cases however if all individuals are equally informed about past play in a statistical sense then the nash bargaining solution remains the unique long run outcome when the mutation rate goes to zero journal of economic literature classification numbers c70 c78

environmental and gender impacts of land tenure regularization in africa pilot evidence from rwanda although increased global demand for land has led to renewed interest in african land tenure few models to address these issues quickly and at the required scale have been identified or evaluated the case of rwanda s nation wide and relatively low cost land tenure regularization program is thus of great interest this paper evaluates the short term impact some 2 5 years after completion of the pilots undertaken to fine tune the approach using a geographic discontinuity design with spatial fixed effects three key findings emerge from the analysis first the program improved land access for legally married women about 76 percent of married couples and prompted better recordation of inheritance rights without gender bias second the analysis finds a very large impact on investment and maintenance of soil conservation measures this effect was particularly pronounced for female headed households suggesting that this group had suffered from high levels of tenure insecurity which the program managed to reduce third land market activity declined allowing rejection of the hypothesis that the program caused a wave of distress sales or widespread landlessness by vulnerable people implications for program design and policy are discussed