on the existence of markov consistent plans under production uncertainty strotz 1956 and pollak 1968 were among the first to study the behaviour of an economic agent whose preferences change over time they suggested that such an agent would choose a consistent plan which they described as the best plan that he would actually follow a markov consistent plan has a particularly simple structure current decisions are independent of past decisions except insofar as past decisions affect the current values of state variables unfortunately markov consistent plans do not generally exist in this paper we demonstrate that the existence problem dissappears for finite horizon problems when one introduces even a small amount of smooth uncertainty into production

a two player competitive discrete location model with simultaneous decisions in this paper we will describe and study a competitive discrete location problem in which two decision makers players will have to decide where to locate their own facilities and customers will be assigned to the closest open facilities we will consider the situation in which the players must decide simultaneously unsure about the decisions of one another and we will present the problem in a franchising environment most problems described in the literature consider sequential rather than simultaneous decisions in a competitive environment most problems consider that there is a set of known and already located facilities and new facilities will have to be located competing with the existing ones in the presence of more than one decision maker most problems found in the literature belong to the class of stackelberg location problems where one decision maker the leader locates first and then the other decision maker the follower locates second knowing the decisions made by the first these types of problems are sequential and differ significantly from the problem tackled in this paper where we explicitly consider simultaneous non cooperative discrete location decisions we describe the problem and its context propose some mathematical formulations and present an algorithmic approach that was developed to find nash equilibria some computational tests were performed that allowed us to better understand some of the features of the problem and the associated nash equilibria among other results we conclude that worsening the situation of a player tends to benefit the other player and that the inefficiency of nash equilibria tends to increase with the level of competition

finding all pure strategy nash equilibria in a planar location game in this paper we deal with a planar location price game where firms first select their locations and then set delivered prices in order to maximize their profits if firms set the equilibrium prices in the second stage the game is reduced to a location game for which pure strategy nash equilibria are studied assuming that the marginal delivered cost is proportional to the distance between the customer and the facility from which it is served we present characterizations of local and global nash equilibria then an algorithm is shown in order to find all possible nash equilibrium pairs of locations the minimization of the social cost leads to a nash equilibrium an example shows that there may exist multiple nash equilibria which are not minimizers of the social cost

existence of stationary bargaining equilibria abstract this paper addresses the question of existence of stationary markov perfect equilibria in a class of dynamic games that includes many known bargaining models and models of coalition formation general sufficient conditions for existence of equilibria are currently lacking in a number of interesting environments e g models with non convexities consumption lower bounds or an evolving state variable the main result establishes existence of equilibrium under compactness and continuity conditions without the structure of convexity or strict comprehensiveness used in the extant literature the proof requires a precise selection of voting equilibria following different proposals using a generalization of fatou s lemma

challenges of existing in a market as a small low quality producer this paper explores the strategy of a small firm entering a monopolist s market thereby creating a duopoly market the small firm avoids competing with the larger incumbent firm by producing a lower quality product at a lower price the model here establishes an equilibrium under a specific set of assumptions and examines how exogenous factors affect prices qualities and profits although the strategy might allow the firm to enter and earn a profit the market conditions may make this position much less desirable to that of the large firm for several reasons in the case explored here where tastes for the product are uniformly distributed the small firm s profit is about six percent of that of the larger firm the smaller firm is more severely threatened by the entrance of a third firm furthermore even if the smaller firm can cut costs its position is not well suited for exploiting such increases in efficiencies

a theory of endogenous coalition structures consider an environment with widespread externalities and suppose that bind ing agreements can be written we study coalition formation in such a setting our analysis proceeds by defining on a partition function an extensive form bargaining game we establish the existence of a stationary subgame perfect equilibrium for such a game our main results are concerned with the characterization of equilib rium coalition structures we develop an algorithm that generates under certain conditions an equilibrium coalition structure our characterization results are especially sharp for symmetric partition functions in particular we provide a uniqueness theorem and apply our results to a cournot oligopoly journal of economic literature classification numbers c71 c72 c78 d62 q 1999 academic press

a model for the multiperiod multiobjective power generation expansion problem a long term multiobjective model for the power generation expansion planning of electric systems is described and evaluated in this paper the model optimizes simultaneously multiple objectives i e minimizes costs environmental impact imported fuel and fuel price risks and decides the location of the planned generation units in a multiperiod planning horizon among the attributes considered in the model are the investment and operation cost of the units the environmental impact the amount of imported fuel and the portfolio investment risk the approach to solve this problem is based on multiobjective linear programming and the analytical hierarchy process a case study from the mexican electric power system is used to illustrate the proposed framework

markov perfect equilibria in intergenerational games with consistent preferences abstract this paper considers the subgame perfect equilibria in markov strategies of an abstract intergenerational game in which the generations preferences are consistent in the sense that they admit recursive aggregators given biconvergence i show that such equilibria exist and are equivalent both to the solutions of bellman s recursive optimality equations and to the optima of the first generation s utility function these results are then applied to a simple model casting new light on the neutrality of government debt and to another accommodating impure altruism finally two new examples crisply illustrate how the paper s equivalences fail when biconvergence fails

markov perfect equilibria in altruistic growth economies with production uncertainty this paper concerns the existence of markov perfect equilibria in altruistic growth economies previous work on deterministic models has established existence only under extremely restrictive conditions we show that the introduction of production uncertainly yields an existence theorem for aggregative infinite horizon models with very general forms of altruism journal of economic literature classification numbers

discounted stochastic games with no stationary nash equilibrium two examples we present two examples of discounted stochastic games each with a continuum of states finitely many players and actions that possess no stationary equilibria the first example has deterministic transitions an assumption undertaken in most of the early applications of dynamics games in economics and perfect information and does not possess even stationary approximate equilibria or markovian equilibria the second example satisfies in addition to stronger regularity assumptions that all transitions are absolutely continuous with respect to a fixed measure an assumption that has been widely used in more recent economic applications this assumption has been undertaken in several positive results on the existence of stationary equilibria in special cases and in particular guarantees the existence of stationary approximate equilibria

two stage robust generation expansion planning a mixed integer linear programming model this paper presents a new uncertainty handling framework for optimal generation expansion planning gep amalgamating the notions of single stage and two stage robust optimization ro the proposed multiyear robust gep methodology as a tractable mixed integer linear programming optimization problem copes with the inherent planning uncertainties associated with forecasted electricity load demand as well as estimated investment and operation costs through distribution free bounded intervals producing polyhedral uncertainty sets the optimal generation expansion plan obtained from the proposed ro approach is immunized against worst case planning uncertainties considering the adopted degree of conservatism for each uncertainty set therefore the proposed methodology is capable of controlling the robustness of the optimal investment schedule regarding the enforced planning uncertainties simulation results demonstrate the efficacy and efficiency of the proposed ro framework throughout gep studies

perfect equilibrium timing of a backstop technology limit pricing induced by trigger zones this paper considers strategic use of r d in the context of an exhaustible resource market where the consuming countries control r d and a cartel controls the resource it is shown that r d investments to develop a backstop technology can be used as a credible threat to induce a low price profile for the resource the price path associated with the unique perfect equilibrium exhibits limit pricing the backstop is eventually introduced but in a period before this event the cartel keeps the price sufficiently low to make delayed investment the preferred alternative for the consuming nations

bargaining without a common prior an immediate agreement theorem in sequential bargaining models without outside options each player s bargaining power is ultimately determined by which player will make an offer and when this paper analyzes a sequential bargaining model in which players may hold different beliefs about which player will make an offer and when excessive optimism about making offers in the future can cause delays in agreement the main result states that despite this if players will remain sufficiently optimistic for a sufficiently long future then in equilibrium they will agree immediately this result is also extended to other canonical models of optimism

contract negotiation and the coase conjecture a strategic foundation for renegotiation proof contracts what does contract negotiation look like when some parties hold private information and negotiation frictions are negligible this paper analyzes this question and provides a foundation for renegotiation proof contracts in this environment the model extends the framework of the coase conjecture to situations in which the quantity or quality of the good is endogenously determined and to more general environments in which preferences are nonseparable in the traded goods as frictions become negligible all equilibria converge to a unique outcome which is separating efficient and straightforward to characterize

the timing of contracting with externalities abstract this paper endogenizes the timing of bilateral contracting between one principal and multiple agents in the presence of externalities contracting simultaneously with all agents is optimal for the principal if externalities become weaker the more an agent trades if instead externalities become stronger sequential negotiations might benefit the principal as they lower the agents outside options under some linearity conditions the principal s preferences with respect to different timings of contracting are opposed to their efficiency ranking

critical infrastructure protection using secrecy a discrete simultaneous game abstract in this research critical infrastructure protection against intentional attacks is modeled as a discrete simultaneous game between the protector and the attacker to model the situation that both players keep the information of their resource allocation secret we prove that keeping the information regarding protection strategies secret can obtain a better effect of critical infrastructure protection than truthfully disclosing it solving a game theoretic problem even in the case of two players has been known to be intractable to deal with this complexity after proving that pure strategy nash equilibrium solutions do not exist for the proposed simultaneous game a new approach is proposed to identify its mixed strategy nash equilibrium solution

nonpaternalistic intergenerational altruism abstract the paper develops a concept of equilibrium behaviour and establishes its existence in a model of nonpaternalistic intergenerational altruism each generation derives utility from its own consumption and the utilities of its successors equilibrium capital stocks are time monotone and therefore converge to a steady state finally when each generation s utility depends on that of at least two successors equilibria may be inefficient this is shown by an example where feasible programs exist providing greater consumption compared to the equilibrium path for every generation

poverty and self control we argue that poverty can perpetuate itself by undermining the capacity for self control in line with a distinguished psychological literature we consider modes of self control that involve the self imposed use of contingent punishments and rewards we study settings in which consumers with quasi hyperbolic preferences confront an otherwise standard intertemporal allocation problem with credit constraints our main result demonstrates that low initial assets can limit self control trapping people in poverty while individuals with high initial assets can accumulate indefinitely thus even temporary policies that initiate accumulation among the poor may be effective we examine implications concerning the effect of access to credit on saving the demand for commitment devices the design of financial accounts to promote accumulation and the variation of the marginal propensity to consume across income from different sources we also explore the nature of optimal self control demonstrating that it has a simple and behaviorally plausible structure that is immune to self renegotiation

dynamic allocation in an altruistic overlapping generations economy abstract this paper is concerned with the issue does there exist a social security program which can be maintained period after period to address this issue the paper considers dynamic allocation in an altruistic overlapping generations economy the altruism is intergenerational nonpaternalistic and two sided it is assumed that generations coexisting in the same period agree on a social welfare function which evaluates the consumption of various generations and play a game against those living in different periods a perfect equilibrium of this game is shown to exist and its properties are examined journal of economic literature classification numbers c72 d62 h55

vertical product differentiation with entry abstract this paper examines the non cooperative behaviour of established firms that compete in product quality and prices while foreseeing the effects of their rivalry on the decisions made by the later entrants we prove an existence and uniqueness of the equilibrium and show that the dominant firms engage in maximal product differentiation i e select the highest and lowest technologically feasible qualities later entrant however always selects an intermediate quality moreover we show that the equilibrium configuration is identical to that generated by perfect foresight equilibrium in a model of sequential entry furthermore the profits earned by each firm are ranked in the same order as the qualities implifying that the later entrant despite being the last mover ends up with higher profits and larger market share than one of the incumbents

optimal investment planning for distributed generation in a competitive electricity market this paper proposes a new heuristic approach for distributed generation dg capacity investment planning from the perspective of a distribution company disco optimal sizing and siting decisions for dg capacity is obtained through a cost benefit analysis approach based on a new optimization model the model aims to minimize the disco s investment and operating costs as well as payment toward loss compensation bus wise cost benefit analysis is carried out on an hourly basis for different forecasted peak demand and market price scenarios this approach arrives at the optimal feasible dg capacity investment plan under competitive electricity market auction as well as fixed bilateral contract scenarios the proposed heuristic method helps alleviate the use of binary variables in the optimization model thus easing the computational burden substantially

psychological expected utility theory and anticipatory feelings we extend expected utility theory to situations in which agents experience feelings of anticipation prior to the resolution of uncertainty we show how these anticipatory feelings may result in time inconsistency we provide an example from portfolio theory to illustrate the potential impact of anticipation on asset prices

inducing efficiency externalities missing markets and the coase theorem the capacity of side payments to induce an efficient outcome as predicted by the coase theorem is studied side payments are formally introduced in a bimatrix game involving externalities and the resulting equilibrium is called an induced equilibrium when induced equilibria exist they weakly pareto dominate a nash equilibrium of the original game without side payments when because of externalities one market is missing an induced equilibrium always exists is uniquely valued and is pareto efficient when more than one market is missing induced equilibria may not exist may be pareto inefficient and may be pareto ranked copyright 1993 by economics department of the university of pennsylvania and the osaka university institute of social and economic research association

two player simultaneous location game preferential rights and overbidding abstract competitive location problems can be characterized by the fact that the decisions made by others will affect our own payoffs in this paper we address a discrete competitive location game in which two decision makers have to decide simultaneously where to locate their services without knowing the decisions of one another this problem arises in a franchising environment in which the decision makers are the franchisees and the franchiser defines the potential sites for locating services and the rules of the game at most one service can be located at each site and one of the franchisees has preferential rights over the other this means that if both franchisees are interested in opening the service in the same site only the one that has preferential rights will open it we consider that both franchisees have budget constraints but the franchisee without preferential rights is allowed to show interest in more sites than the ones she can afford we are interested in studying the influence of the existence of preferential rights and overbidding on the outcomes for both franchisees and franchiser a model is presented and an algorithmic approach is developed for the calculation of nash equilibria several computational experiments are defined and their results are analysed showing that preferential rights give its holder a relative advantage over the other competitor the possibility of overbidding seems to be advantageous for the franchiser as well as the inclusion of some level of asymmetry between the two decision makers

competitive location production and market selection abstract this paper investigates how firms should select their production sites capacities and quantities under rivalry there are assumed to be a finite number of discrete potential location sites and a finite number of discrete markets which may or may not coincide firms first decide either simultaneously or sequentially whether and where to establish a production site the fixed cost of opening a facility and the marginal cost of production both depend on where the facility is located firms then choose capacity and a production quantity for each market prices in each market are determined by the total quantity available at that location via the cournot mechanism this formulation thus addresses multi market oligopolistic spatial competition with heterogeneity in production and logistics costs we then analyze the nash equilibria of the entry game and provide sufficient conditions for the existence of equilibria in the simultaneous entry game at equilibrium firms may not produce for all markets and may have limited market areas however these areas may overlap so that there are multiple suppliers in any market in general there may not be a first mover advantage and early entrants may earn lower profits than later entrants

coalition formation with binding agreements we study coalition formation in real time a situation in which coalition formation is intertwined with the ongoing receipt of pay offs agreements are assumed to be permanently binding they can only be altered with the full consent of existing signatories for characteristic function games we prove that equilibrium processes whether or not these are history dependent must converge to efficient absorbing states for three player games with externalities each player has enough veto power that a general efficiency result can be established however there exist four player games in which all markov equilibria are inefficient from every initial condition despite the ability to write permanently binding agreements copyright 2007 wiley blackwell

sequential nonzero sum blotto allocating defensive resources prior to attack abstract the strategic allocation of resources across multiple fronts has long been studied in the context of blotto games in which two players simultaneously select their allocations however many allocation problems are sequential for example a state trying to defend against a terrorist attack generally allocates some or all of its resources before the attacker decides where to strike this paper studies the allocation problem confronting a defender who must decide how to distribute limited resources across multiple sites before an attacker chooses where to strike unlike many blotto games which only have very complicated mixed strategy equilibria the sequential nonzero sum blotto game always has a very simple pure strategy subgame perfect equilibrium further the defender always plays the same pure strategy in any equilibrium and the attacker s equilibrium response is generically unique and entails no mixing the defender minmaxes the attacker in equilibrium even though the game is nonzero sum and the attacker strikes the site among its best replies that minimizes the defender s expected losses

endogenous games and mechanisms side payments among players we characterize the outcomes of games when players may make binding offers of strategy contingent side payments before the game is played this does not always lead to efficient outcomes despite complete information and costless contracting the characterizations are illustrated in a series of examples including voluntary contribution public good games cournot and bertrand oligopoly principal agent problems and commons games among others