bilateral bargaining with externalities this paper provides an analysis of a non cooperative pairwise bargaining game between agents in a network we establish that there exists an equilibrium that generates a coalitional bargaining division of the reduced surplus that arises as a result of externalities between agents that is we provide a non cooperative justification for a cooperative division of a non cooperative surplus the resulting division is related to the myerson shapley value with properties that are particularly useful and tractable in applications we demonstrate this by examining buyer seller networks and vertical foreclosure

voter turnout in the industrial democracies during the 1980s there are two contending accounts of cross national variation in voter turnout rates one emphasizes the role of institutions and electoral attributes whereas the other stresses cultural and historical factors the authors evaluate the merits of these two arguments they first apply the model developed by r w jackman to turnout rates during the 1980s expanding the sample of industrial states to include three newer democracies with recent authoritarian histories greece portugal and spain they then examine the potential impact of cultural variables on voter turnout rates the authors conclude that the institutional argument outperforms the cultural account of conventional political participation

cooperative outcomes through noncooperative games abstract this paper shows the equivalence between the stable solution set of any cooperative game in characteristic form g1 and the subgame perfect nash equilibria in pure strategies of a certain noncooperative game g2 players of g1 are named agents g2 is played by different players principals who compete in wages to attract agents the equivalence result holds when there are enough principals if the game is superadditive two principals suffice finally another related cooperative game g3 is constructed with both principals and agents as players for g2 and g3 the same result is then proven for any number of principals journal of economic literature classification numbers c71 and c72

multiple equilibrium overnight rates in a dynamic interbank market game abstract we analyse a two period model of the interbank market i e the market where banks trade liquidity we assume that banks do not take the interbank interest rate as given but instead negotiate on interest rates and transaction volumes with each other the solution concept applied is the shapley value we show that there are a multiplicity of average equilibrium interest rates of the first period so that the average interest rate in this period does not convey any information on the expected liquidity situation on the interbank market as the banks control not only the transaction volumes but also the interest rates they can leave the interest rates constant and adjust the transaction volumes when for example a liquidity deficit becomes more likely

the formation of networks with transfers among players we examine the formation of networks among a set of players whose payoffs depend on the structure of the network when players may bargain by promising or demanding transfer payments when forming links we vary three aspects of the game i whether players can only make transfers to and receive transfers from players to whom they are directly linked or whether they can also subsidize links that they are not directly involved in ii whether or not transfers relating to a given link can be made contingent on the full resulting network or only on the link itself and iii whether or not players can pay other players to refrain from forming links we characterize the networks that are supported under these variations and show how each of the above aspects either accounts for a specific type of externality or deals with the combinatorial nature of network payoffs

turnout across democracies world democracies widely differ in legislative executive and legal institutions different institutional environments induce different mappings from electoral outcomes to the distribution of power we explore how these mappings affect voters participation in an election we show that the effect of such institutional differences on turnout depends on the distribution of voters preferences we uncover a novel contest effect given the preferences distribution turnout increases and then decreases when we move from a more proportional to a less proportional power sharing system turnout is maximized for an intermediate degree of power sharing moreover we generalize the competition effect common to models of endogenous turnout given the institutional environment turnout increases in the ex ante preferences evenness and more so when the overall system has lower power sharing these results are robust to a wide range of modeling approaches including ethical voter models voter mobilization models and rational voter models

bargaining foundations of shapley value1 a transferable utility economy in which each agent holds a resource which can be used in combination with the resources of other agents to generate value according to the characteristic function v is studied using a dynamic model of bargaining the main theorem establishes that the payoffs associated with efficient equilibria converge to the agents shapley values as the time between periods of the dynamic game goes to zero in addition it is demonstrated that an efficient equilibrium exists and is unique when an additivity condition is satisfied to demonstrate the sensitivity of the solution to the institutional detail we modify the model to allow for partnerships and show that the shapley value is no longer achieved

signaling and election motivations in a voting model with common values and responsive candidates in this paper we focus on strategic voting behavior when both an election and a signaling motivation affect voters behavior we analyze a model of elections with two candidates competing on a one dimensional policy space voters are privately and imperfectly informed about a common shock affecting the electorate s preferences candidates are assumed to choose policy in response to information gleaned from election results and according to exogenous factors that may lead to polarization in candidates policy choices we analyze a subset of symmetric equilibria in which strategies are symmetric to candidates names and private signals css equilibria we show that signaling and election motivations pull voters to vote in different directions we provide conditions that show the relation between the amount of information aggregated in the election and the motivation that influences voting behavior the most finally we show that when candidates are responsive and polarized all css equilibria are inefficient in the limit

marginal contributions and externalities in the value our concern is the extension of the theory of the shapley value to problems involving externalities using the standard axiom systems behind the shapley value for an arbitrary exogenous coalition structure leads to the identification of bounds on players payos around an externality free value in endogenizing the coalition structure we analyze a two stage process of coalition formation in whose second stage our axiomatic results are applied we find reasons to explain inecient coalition structures and provide sucient conditions for eciency

consumer demand and household production the relationship between fertility and child mortality forces which link biological and behavioral factors to infant mortality and fertility in the united states are examined estimates can be arrived at if all of the important types of behavior affecting infant survival prices and income constraints facing households are diligently gathered using equations to determine the relationship between a family health endowment index in conjunction with a childs health information about optimal prenatal and postnatal behavior can be estimated and observed this estimate which is strongly a factor of parental and environmental health related factors attempts to characterize the biological effects of parents behavior on birthweight gestation and the rate of fetal growth another estimate presented is one which establishes a link between biological effects of birth order on infant mortality in this analysis factors such as medical care during pregnancy mothers rate of smoking mothers age duration of breastfeeding mothers race and childs sex were included household socioeconomic and health data were also estimated in order to understand state and county ability to provide adequate health facilities for pre and postnatal maternal care in particular results suggest that child mortality declines in developed countries and that mothers seek prenatal medical care in early stages of their pregnancy when risk is anticipated further study of the differential pattern of black and white fertility behavior in regard to seeking medical care is warranted

bargaining and value we present and analyze a model of noncooperative bargaining among n participants applied to situations describable as games in coalitional form this leads to a unified solution theory for such games that has as special cases the shapley value in the transferable utility tu case the nash bargaining solution in the pure bargaining case and the recently introduced maschler owen consistent value in the general nontransferable utility ntu case moreover we show that any variation in a certain class of our bargaining procedure which generates the shapley value in the tu setup must yield the consistent value in the general ntu setup

information aggregation and turnout in proportional representation a laboratory experiment abstract this paper documents a laboratory experiment that analyzes voter participation in common interest proportional representation pr elections comparing this with majority rule consistent with theoretical predictions poorly informed voters in either system abstain from voting thereby shifting weight to those who are better informed a dilution problem makes mistakes especially costly under pr so abstention is higher in pr in contrast with private interest environments and welfare is lower deviations from nash equilibrium predictions can be accommodated by a logit version of quantal response equilibrium qre which allows for voter mistakes

uncertain infant mortality learning and life cycle fertility this article examines the links between infant mortality and fertility in an environment with unobserved heterogeneity in infant mortality risk across mothers in such an environment replacement behavior i e the fertility response to an experienced child death might be influenced by mothers learning about a family specific component of infant mortality risk i explicitly introduce learning by mothers in a dynamic stochastic model of life cycle marital fertility and i estimate the model s structural parameters using malaysian panel data the framework is used to estimate replacement rates and to correct for birth selectivity in the estimation of the relationship between infant mortality risk and health inputs

a theory of participation in elections we analyze a model of participation in elections in which voting is costly and no vote is pivotal ethical agents are motivated to participate when they determine that agents of their type are obligated to do so unlike previous duty based models of participation in our model an ethical agent s obligation to vote is determined endogenously as a function of the behavior of other agents our model predicts high turnout and comparative statics that are consistent with strategic behavior jel d72

forming coalitions and the shapley ntu value a simple protocol for coalition formation is presented first an order of the players is randomly chosen then a coalition grows by sequentially incorporating new members in this order the protocol is studied in the context of non transferable utility ntu games in characteristic function form if weighted utility transfers are feasible when everybody cooperates then the expected subgame perfect equilibrium payoff allocation anticipated before any implemented game is the shapley ntu value

coalitional bargaining with consistent counterfactuals abstract we propose a new solution concept for tu cooperative games in characteristic function form the scoop which builds on the symmetric nash bargaining solution nbs by adding a consistency requirement for negotiations inside every coalition the scoop specifies the probability of success and the payoffs to each coalition the players share the surplus of a coalition according to the nbs the disagreement payoffs are computed as the expectation of payoffs in other coalitions using a common probability distribution that is derived from the prior distribution the predicted outcome can be probabilistic or deterministic but only an efficient coalition can succeed with probability one we discuss the necessary and sufficient conditions for an efficient solution in either case the scoop always exists is generically unique for superadditive games and is easy to compute moreover in the spirit of the nash program we propose a non cooperative protocol whose stationary equilibrium identifies the scoop as the limit equilibrium outcome

sharing the surplus an extension of the shapley value for environments with externalities economic activities both on the macro and micro level often entail wide spread externalities this in turn leads to disputes regarding the compensation levels to the various parties affected we propose a method of deciding upon the distribution of the gains costs of cooperation in the presence of externalities when forming the grand coalition is efficient we show that any sharing rule satisfying efficiency linearity dummy player and a strong symmetry axioms can be obtained through an average game adding an additional axiom we identify one unique rule satisfying these properties

allocating value among farsighted players in network formation we study the stability of networks when players are farsighted and allocations are determined endogenously the set of strongly efficient networks is the unique von neumann morgenstern farsightedly stable set with bargaining if the value function is anonymous component additive and top convex and the allocation rule is anonymous and component efficient moreover the componentwise egalitarian allocation rule emerges endogenously

program interventions intrahousehold distribution and the welfare of individuals modelling household behavior abstract in this essay the implications for the intrahousehold distribution of resources derived from economic models of household behavior that treat the household as maximizing a single welfare function are reviewed particular attention is paid to the within family allocation of time and food and to the effects of these resources on the schooling earnings and health status of individuals as they are affected by direct food intervention and female employment schemes and price altering policies empirical applications are provided from data sets from india indonesia and the philippines to illustrate the power and limitations of such models for illuminating household interventions and for placing restrictions on data

coalition formation and bargaining protocols a review of the literature this paper offers a review of the vast literature regarding bargaining and coalition formation this topic has been generally described as the attempt to provide strategic foundations to cooperative solution concepts it can therefore be seen as the linking ring between the non cooperative and the cooperative game theoretic approach to coalition formation its central role in economic theory and its relatively long history that goes back to the nash program have fostered a large academic production including surveys nonetheless this paper will focus on an aspect that is often neglected in the dedicated surveys the specificities of the bargaining protocols leading to different outcomes although generally downgraded to the rank of details the differences in bargaining protocols even when minor can cause significant changes in fundamental aspects such as the possibility to reach full cooperation the distribution of final pay offs and the time taken to reach an agreement focused on externalities free games therefore on bargaining protocols sustaining solution concepts for cooperative games in characteristic function form the paper aims at providing a brief but exhaustive review of the topic that could result in a very useful tool for any researcher approaching the subject of coalitional bargaining

forming efficient networks abstract we suggest a simple sequential mechanism whose subgame perfect equilibria give rise to efficient networks moreover the payoffs received by the agents coincide with their shapley value in an appropriately defined cooperative game

a one stage model of link formation and payoff division abstract in this paper we introduce a strategic form model in which cooperation structures and divisions of the payoffs are determined simultaneously we analyze the cooperation structures and payoff divisions that result according to nash equilibria strong nash equilibria and coalition proof nash equilibria we find that no cycle will be formed if a player claims a positive amount for the formation of one of its links and that a player does not necessarily profit from a central position in a cooperation structure journal of economic literature classification numbers c71 c72

bidding for the surplus a non cooperative approach to the shapley value abstract we propose a simple mechanism to determine how the surplus generated by cooperation is to be shared in zero monotonic environments with transferable utility the mechanism consists of a bidding stage followed by a proposal stage we show that the subgame perfect equilibrium outcomes of this mechanism coincide with the vector of the shapley value payoffs we extend our results to implement the weighted shapley values finally we generalize our mechanism to handle arbitrary transferable utility environments the modified mechanism generates an efficient coalition structure and implements the shapley values of the super additive cover of the environment journal of economic literature classification numbers c71 c72

getting out the vote participation in gubernatorial elections scholarship on electoral turnout has long emphasized two main themes explanations of nonvoting in terms of individual characteristics and in terms of contextual variables these investigations have deeply enriched our understanding of electoral participation but their limitations have also sensitized us to the remaining problems of explanation perusal of the work on american politics exposes a rather striking tendency in studies of participation to ignore or soft pedal the effects of active political mobilization in this article we formulate two models of electoral turnout socioeconomic and political mobilization and apply them to aggregate data on voting in gubernatorial elections of 1978 and 1980 the socioeconomic model of turnout includes such influences as income age and educational attainment to assess the effects of political mobilization we have considered campaign spending partisan competition electoral margin and the presence or absence of a simultaneous race for the united states senate both of the models perform quite well individually producing significant and meaningful coefficients and adequate fits yet in the final analysis we demonstrate that quite apart from major sources of variation in gubernatorial turnout such as region and presidential versus nonpresidential years the mobilizing influences of campaign activism and competitiveness have a strong impact on electoral participation electoral law i e closing date of registration retains a small but significant effect on voting for governor and socioeconomic characteristics included in a fully specified model have little to contribute independently to an explanation of electoral turnout these findings are very much in the same vein as related cross national investigations which emphasize the crucial role of electoral law and political parties and downplay individual characteristics as determinants of electoral participation on the basis of the research reported here we argue that scholars need to pay more attention to political mobilization as an explanation of electoral turnout in the presidential election between cox and harding in 1920 only half of the eligible voters participated this relatively low turnout together with the historically minimal rates of participation in state and local elections created deep concern among those who believed that reasonably high levels of political involvement are crucial in maintaining a healthy democratic politics it was in this atmosphere of worry about low electoral turnout that charles e merriam and harold f gosnell 1924 conducted in the city of chicago the first systematic study of nonvoting subsequently gosnell 1927 went even further and executed the first experimental study in modern political science demonstrating conditions that could stimulate electoral turnout we too worry about low participation in elections today at every level of government and we believe these classic studies

closeness expenditures and turnout in the 1982 u s house elections students of elections have repeatedly found that the closeness of an election is modestly correlated with turnout this may be due to a direct response of instrumentally motivated voters but recent theoretical work casts doubt on the adequacy of this explanation another possibility is that elite actors respond to closeness with greater effort at mobilization we explore the latter possibility by using fec and state data on campaign expenditures in house senate and gubernatorial races our results indicate that closeness has an effect at both the mass and elite levels we also provide quantitative estimates of the effect of senate and gubernatorial expenditure on house turnout

choosing wisely a multibidding approach reaching decisions about the location of noxious facilities such as dump sites environmentally hazardous plants nuclear power generators and the like is a highly contentious issue for instance in february 2000 the u s senate decided that nationwide nuclear waste would be shipped to the yucca mountain site in nevada conditional to it being approved as a high level nuclear waste repository despite the attractive compensation package the state of nevada voiced vehement opposition president clinton vetoed the bill and in may 2000 the senate failed to overturn it as such the major problem facing the u s nuclear industry on where to site a high level radioactive waste repository remains virtually unresolved neither are decisions about the location of desirable events easily solvable every two years the international olympic committee selects hosts for the summer and winter games a procedure that is constantly under review and revision in order to bring about the best possible outcome until about a year ago the decision was made by a vote based on bids and plans submitted by candidate cities however the recent controversy surrounding the choice of salt lake city to host the 2002 winter games culminated in the design of a new procedure for choosing the host of the 2006 winter games this procedure called for the selection of two finalist cities in this case turin and sion immediately after which the host was selected by secret ballot in this case turin another similar issue is currently the subject of heated debate in spain the spanish government both on the national and local level has recently been discussing various possible projects for transferring water from rivers in the north of spain to the arid southern regions the parties involved have conflicting interests with regard to several aspects of the projects proposed particularly the water rich regions are hesitant to give up parts of their water resources the parties involved have still not agreed upon the choice of a transport mode or the size of the transfer payments that would compensate the localities that are relinquishing part of the water supply these and several other cases belong to a class of problems in which a group of agents has to choose one out of several projects a project is efficient if it maximizes the aggregate welfare of the group members reaching an efficient outcome is trivial when the designer has all the relevant information however it is often the case that the parties concerned possess much more information than the designer hence the designer faces a nontrivial problem if she wishes to optimally choose one of the projects moreover from a normative point of view even if the designer has all the information it is easier to justify the use of a fixed procedure to reach a decision than to modify the procedure for various cases in light of information disclosed or already available to the designer several well known methods are available for the problem of choosing one out of a set of alternatives one class of methods consists of various voting schemes such as majority voting or the borda rule the outcomes generated by these methods need not be efficient due to strategic behavior on the part of the agents another class of methods consists of vickreyclarke groves mechanisms for this class truthtelling is a dominant strategy that always results in the choice of an efficient alternative however these mechanisms are not budgetbalanced and the payments collected from the perez castrillo department of economics code universitat autonoma de barcelona 08193 bellatera barcelona spain wettstein department of economics bengurion university of the negev monaster center for economic research beer sheva 84105 israel we thank herve moulin for his helpful suggestions suresh mutuswami who encouraged us to check for strong nash equilibria and francis bloch mark gradstein moshe justman jordi masso and two anonymous referees for their useful comments perez castrillo gratefully acknowledges financial support from bec2000 0172 and 2000sgr 00054

noncooperative foundations of bargaining power in committees and the shapley shubik index abstract in this paper we explore the noncooperative foundations of the bargaining power that a voting rule gives to each member of a committee that bargains in search of consensus over a set of feasible agreements under a voting rule assuming complete information we model a variety of bargaining protocols and investigate their stationary subgame perfect equilibria we show how the shapley shubik index and other power indices can be interpreted as measures of bargaining power that appear in this light as limit cases

the paradox of voter participation a laboratory study it is widely believed that rational choice theory is grossly inconsistent with empirical observations about voter turnout we report the results of an experiment designed to test the voter turnout predictions of the rational choice palfrey rosenthal model of participation with asymmetric information we find that the three main comparative statics predictions are observed in the data the size effect whereby turnout goes down in larger electorates the competition effect whereby turnout is higher in elections that are expected to be close and the underdog effect whereby voters supporting the less popular alternative have higher turnout rates we also compare the quantitative magnitudes of turnout to the predictions of nash equilibrium we find that there is undervoting for small electorates and overvoting for large electorates relative to nash equilibrium these deviations from nash equilibrium are consistent with the logit version of quantal response equilibrium which provides a good fit to the data and can also account for significant voter turnout in very large elections

an ordinal shapley value for economic environments abstract we propose a new solution concept to address the problem of sharing a surplus among the agents generating it the problem is formulated in the preferences endowments space the solution is defined recursively incorporating notions of consistency and fairness and relying on properties satisfied by the shapley value for transferable utility tu games we show a solution exists and call it the ordinal shapley value osv we characterize the osv using the notion of coalitional dividends and furthermore show it is monotone and anonymous

coalitional bargaining with competition to make offers abstract the paper analyzes a simple discrete time noncooperative coalitional bargaining game in which at each stage there is a contest for the right to make a proposal the pure stationary subgame perfect equilibrium payoff set is equal to the core journal of economic literature classification numbers 026

implementation of bargaining sets via simple mechanisms abstract we propose two simple mechanisms that implement two bargaining sets in super additive environments the first bargaining set is a close variation of the one proposed by l zhou 1994 games econom behav 6 512 526 and the second is the pareto optimum payoffs of the a mas colell 1989 j math econom 18 129 139 bargaining set we adopt a simple framework in which the cooperative outcomes are realized as non cooperative subgame perfect equilibria in pure strategies of a two stage game played by an auxiliary set of individuals competing over the cooperative agents journal of economic literature classification numbers c71 c72

a note on network formation with decay abstract this paper studies an endogenous network formation with decay we introduce a strategic form game based on a simple bilateral cost allocation rule we show that a strong nash equilibrium of this game always exists and necessarily achieves efficient networks

realizing fair outcomes in minimum cost spanning tree problems through non cooperative mechanisms abstract in the context of minimum cost spanning tree problems we present a bargaining mechanism for connecting all agents to the source and dividing the cost among them the basic idea is very simple we ask each agent the part of the cost he is willing to pay for an arc to be constructed we prove that there exists a unique payoff allocation associated with the subgame perfect nash equilibria of this bargaining mechanism moreover this payoff allocation coincides with the rule defined in bergantinos and vidal puga bergantinos g vidal puga j j 2007a a fair rule in minimum cost spanning tree problems journal of economic theory 137 326 352

parental preference heterogeneity and human capital inequality abstract in this article i provide an empirical account of the human capital investment behavior of parents in the face of endowment differences among siblings the data set used contains a three wave panel of 4 030 individuals the article presents a rare case in which endowments are measured explicitly health endowments are estimated from dynamic health production functions while educational endowments are obtained from test scores the simple score of the standard raven s colored progressive matrix cpm test is used to measure educational endowments i use estimation procedures that combine an instrumental variables method with panel data estimators to control for endogeneity and heterogeneity the results suggest that parents compensate for initial differences in health but reinforce initial educational differences among siblings hence an educational subsidy aimed at reducing inequality may end up reinforcing the inequality that might exist in the absence of such subsidy when parents invest mor

the effect of economic opportunity and family background on adolescent cohabitation on adolescent cohabitation and childbearing among low income blacks this article uses a hazards model permitting continuous covariates and fixed effects to estimate the effect of local employment opportunity and family background on the cohabitation and childbearing of black youths from low income households support is found for w j wilson s hypothesis that employment opportunity encourages the formation of cohabitational unions as well as for the opportunity cost hypothesis that employment opportunity discourages childbearing outside such unions however the latter effect appears to be larger suggesting that the opportunity cost hypothesis is the primary channel through which higher employment rates result in lower rates of illegitimacy among underclass youths

a group rule utilitarian approach to voter turnout theory and evidence this paper explores a group rule utilitarian approach to understanding voter turnout inspired by the theoretical work of john c harsanyi 1980 and timothy j feddersen and alvaro sandroni 2002 it develops a model based on this approach and studies its performance in explaining turnout in texas liquor referenda the results are encouraging the comparative static predictions of the model are broadly consistent with the data and a structurally estimated version of the model yields reasonable coefficient estimates and fits the data well the structurally estimated model also outperforms a simple expressive voting model

auctioning and selling positions a non cooperative approach to queueing conflicts abstract complementary to the axiomatic and mechanism design studies on queueing problems this paper proposes a strategic bargaining approach to resolve queueing conflicts given a situation where players with different waiting costs have to form a queue in order to be served they firstly compete with each other for a specific position in the queue then the winner can decide to take up the position or sell it to the others in the former case the rest of the players will proceed to compete for the remaining positions in the same manner whereas for the latter case the seller can propose a queue with corresponding payments to the others which can be accepted or rejected in this paper we show that when the players are competing for the first position in the queue then the subgame perfect equilibrium outcome of the corresponding mechanism coincides with the well known maximal transfer rule while an efficient queue is always formed in equilibrium we also argue that changing the mechanism so that the players compete for the last position implements the minimal transfer rule the analysis discovers a striking relationship between pessimism and optimism in this type of decision making

coattail voting in recent presidential elections this article presents a method for analyzing the extent and strength of coattail voting in presidential elections this method allows the authors to estimate the magnitude of coattail voting and then to decompose this estimate into more basic elements estimates are given for presidential elections beginning with 1956 the determination of the coattail vote and its decomposition depend on the theory of the voting decision that is assumed in this article we present a model of vote determination that is similar in most respects to the traditional src model the vote for congressional representation in a presidential election year is determined jointly by partisan affiliation attitudes toward the presidential candidates and local forces unique to the congressional race such as may be captured by an incumbency variable this model permits the separate estimation of the strength of short term forces and of the efficiency of the presidential coattails application of the model to survey data since 1956 indicates that efficiency of presidential coattails has declined during this period furthermore the 1980 election does not appear to be an exception to this trend on the other hand there has not been any particular trend in the strength of short term forces during this period instead events peculiar to the context of a specific election generate short term forces at the level of the presidential election but the degree to which these forces are carried over to local races seems to have declined

public information and electoral bias abstract we present a theory of voting that predicts that elections are more likely to be close and voter turnout is more likely to be high when citizens possess better public information about the composition of the electorate these findings suggest that providing more information to potential voters about aggregate political preferences e g through pre election polls or expert forecasts may undermine the democratic process our analysis reveals that if the distribution of political preferences is common knowledge then the unique type symmetric equilibrium leads to a stark neutrality result in which each alternative is equally likely to win the election by contrast when citizens are ignorant about the preference distribution the majority is more likely to win the election and expected voter turnout is lower welfare is therefore unambiguously higher when citizens possess less information about the preference distribution

rational turnout the neglected role of groups rational choice theories have difficulty accounting for individual participation in collective action voting is among the acts hardest to explain consumption benefits have been proposed to account for nonzero turnout the model presented here establishes a political investment basis for these benefits i argue that voters often act not in isolation but as part of groups with shared interests while individuals still vote because of consumption benefits arising from the act of voting some of these consumption benefits are provided by group leaders out of collective benefits received by the group in return for its votes the collective benefit comes from a candidate adopting policy positions closer to those of the group in passing i show that the widespread availability of public opinion polling increases the candidate s incentive to shift position finally some data from recent off year elections are shown to be consistent with the model

governmental interventions and household behavior in a developing country anticipating the unanticipated consequences of social programs abstract estimates of the joint effects of governmental health education and family planning programs as well as sources of water on fertility child mortality and schooling are obtained from combined district level and household level data from rural india the estimates are used both to test the implications of a model of household decision making and to assess the effectiveness of the joint public provision of such services in shifting resources from increasing family size to augmenting human capital per person the results appear consistent with household optimizing behavior and suggest that reductions in the costs of medical services contraceptives and schooling and the improvement of water sources are mutually reinforcing alternatives for implementing the joint policy goals of reduced population growth and increased human capital formation

conflict and rent seeking success functions ratio vs difference models of relative success the rent seeking competitions studied by economists fall within a much broader category of conflict interactions that also includes military combats election campaigns industrial disputes lawsuits and sibling rivalries in the rent seeking literature each party s success pi which can be interpreted either as the probability of victory or as the proportion of the prize won has usually been taken to be a function of the ratio of the respective resource commitments alternatively however pi may instead be a function of the difference between the parties commitments to the contest the contest success function csf for the difference from is a logistic curve in which as is consistent with military experience increasing returns apply up to an inflection point at equal resource commitments a crucial flaw of the traditional ratio model is that neither onesided submission nor two sided peace between the parties can ever occur as a cournot equilibrium in contrast both of these outcomes are entirely consistent with a model in which success is a function of the difference between the parties resource commitments

voter participation and strategic uncertainty the paradox of not voting is examined in a model where voters have uncertainty about the preferences and costs of other voters in game theoretic models of voter participation under complete information equilibrium outcomes can have substantial turnout even when voting costs are relatively high in contrast when uncertainty about preferences and costs is present only voters with negligible or negative net voting costs participate when the electorate is large

is mandatory voting better than voluntary voting we investigate the welfare effects of policies that increase voter turnout in costly voting models in a generalized costly voting model we show that if the electorate is sufficiently large then increasing voter turnout is generically efficient increasing turnout in small elections is only inefficient if the electorate is evenly divided or if there is already almost complete voter participation finally we argue that the effects underlying our results are robust in a large class of endogenous participation models

electoral rules strategic entry and polarization abstract how does electoral rule disproportionality affect the structure of the party system i e the number and the policy platforms of the competing parties by studying a model where both party entry and platform choice are endogenous we are able to provide a unified theory an increasing electoral rule disproportionality exhibits a a first order negative effect on platform polarization b a second order negative effect on the number of parties as polarization decreases centrist parties are squeezed between other contenders and prefer not to enter and c an additional third order negative effect on polarization via the reduction of the number of parties we then conduct a laboratory experiment and strongly confirm the theoretical predictions of the model

birth spacing and sibling inequality asymmetric information within the family this paper formulates a dynamic model of birth spacing incorporating uncertainty about and heterogeneity in birth outcomes and joint production to assess how the spacing of children responds to exogenous shocks in birth outcomes estimation technics are developed that use assumptions about the constraints on the information available to parental decision makers associated with the sequential nature of childbearing ignored in static models of intra household behavior section 1 examines the technology of birth spacing and its consequences for the level and distribution of child outcomes and resources in section 2 the model compares alternative estimation technics in section 3 data from a probability sample of us white married couples are used to describe intrafamily variation in birth outcomes and spacing and to test for heterogeneity bias the results in section 4 suggest that across family heterogeneity bias may be less important than within family heterogeneity bias in estimates of the effects of birth order and timing patterns of births on health results from family fixed effect of sibling models of child quality determination that ignore intrafamily substitution may be misleading section 5 estimates how birth outcome endowments and information on gender are used to estimate how differences in them affect subsequent birth timing decisions and sibling inequality results suggest that 1 the birth of 1st born children tends to be delayed among families with high income husbands highly educated parents superior health endowment or high tastes for health investments 2 the proximity of the birth of the 2nd child to that of the 1st child is a positive function of the quality of the 1st born and 3 the spacing and existence of a 3rd child is significantly related to the birth outcomes sex composition and sex ordering of the 1st and 2nd children

bidding for surplus in network allocation problems in this paper we study non cooperative foundations of network allocation rules we focus on three allocation rules the myerson value the position value and the component wise egalitarian solution for any of these three rules we provide a characterization based on component efficiency and some balanced contribution property additionally we present three mechanisms whose equilibrium payoffs are well defined and coincide with the three rules under consideration if the underlying value function is monotonic non monotonic value functions are shown to deal with allocation rules applied to monotonic covers the mechanisms are inspired by the implementation of the shapley value by perez castrillo and wettstein bidding for the surplus a non cooperative approach to the shapley value j econ theory 100 2 2001 274 294

rational bargaining in games with coalitional externalities this paper provides a flexible strategic framework to analyze bargaining and values in environments with coalitional externalities within this framework we propose a new value that extends the shapley value to partition function form games the so called rational belief shapley rbs value we investigate the strategic foundation of the rbs value by constructing an implementation mechanism this mechanism extends existing models of multilateral bargaining by allowing players a higher degree of freedom to form coalitions the same framework of bidding and renegotiation allows for natural variations of the rbs mechanism in this way alternative shapley like values are obtained and a unified platform to analyze and compare these solutions is provided

endogenous formation of coalitions the formation of coalitions is a fundamental problem in game theory by a coalition is meant a group of players e g economic or political agents which decide to act together as one unit relative to the rest of the players this includes the instances of syndicates unions cartels blocks political parties parliamentary coalitions etc we would like to emphasize that forming a coalition does not eliminate the individual players as decision makers in all interactions with the other players coalition members act as one unit it may be useful to think of a representative agent taking their place 2 however this arrangement will continue only as long as each player finds it desirable to act this way further bargaining occurs among the members of each coalition on how to divide what they obtained together thus the existence of coalitions implies that the interactions among the players will be conducted on two levels first among the coalitions and second within each coalition most of the existing models in economics and game theory assume that the coalition structure is given exogenously instead we try here to obtain it as an endogenous outcome of our model namely we want to be able to predict which coalitions will in fact form in each given situation 3 our theory combines two kinds of game theoretic concepts value and stability the basic idea is first to evaluate the players prospects in the various coalition structures and then based on these values to find which ones are stable we will call this value coalition structure value or cs value for short the reason we are considering coalition structures i e partitions of the set of players into disjoint coalitions rather than just coalitions is that in general players may find it to their advantage to join forces in some situations and to act separately in others all depending on the way the other participants are organized this implies that both the value and the stability concepts should depend on the entire coalition structure the cs value we analyze in this paper was first developed by owen 7

an implementation of the owen value abstract we present an implementation of the owen value owen 1977 essays in mathematical economics and game theory pp 76 88 inspired by the bidding mechanism introduced by perez castrillo and wettstein 2001 j econ theory 100 274 294 the idea is the following first players of each coalition play the bidding mechanism trying to obtain the resources of the coalition later players who obtained the resources play the bidding mechanism in order to share the surplus

electoral rule disproportionality and platform polarization despite common perception existing theoretical literature lacks a complete for mal argument regarding the relationship between the electoral rule disproportionality and platform polarization in this paper we build a model that incorporates the disproportionality of the electoral system in a standard downsian electoral competition setup with mainly but not necessarily purely policy motivated parties we first show that in equilibrium platform polarization is decreasing in the level of the electoral rule disproportionality we then argue that the number of parties has a positive effect on platform polarization when polarization is measured by the distance between the two most distant platforms this effect does not hold when polarization is measured by the widely used dalton index constructing a dataset covering more than 300 elections our main theoretical findings are empirically supported pointing towards the electoral rule disproportionality as a major determinant of polarization

pandering to persuade a principal chooses one of multiple projects or an outside option an agent is privately informed about the projects benets and shares the principal s preferences except for not internalizing her value from the outside option we show that for moderate outside option values strategic communication is characterized by pandering the agent biases his recommendation toward conditionally better looking projects even when both parties would be better o with some other project a project that has lower expected value can be conditionally better looking we develop some comparative statics of pandering pandering is also induced by an optimal mechanism without transfers

declining voter turnout in advanced industrial democracies 1950 to 1997 the effects of declining group mobilization past comparative voting behavior research has revealed that electoral institutions can explain much of the variation in voter turnout between nations this study takes an alternative and dynamic approach by identifying and explaining a pattern of turnout decline within industrial democracies which is beyond purely institutional explanation multivariate analysis of a pooled cross section of 18 industrial democracies between 1950 and 1997 suggests that turnout decline can best be explained in terms of changing patterns of group mobilization and electorate demographics the authors specifically point to the decline of unions and labor parties which have traditionally been associated with the mobilization of peripheral voters and the real increases in the cost of mobilization the authors control for institutional changes and find that they are less useful in explaining variation in turnout within advanced industrial democracies

longevity complementarities under competing risks many of the high expenditure health programs established by international organizations or national and subnational governments involve disease specific interventions such as measles vaccinations hiv education programs mammogram screening malaria prevention and lung cancer research typically these programs are evaluated solely upon the success or failure of their impact on the targeted disease this paper argues that such an exclusive evaluation may significantly underestimate the overall effect of disease specific interventions when multiple risks act as competing forces on life we suggest that programs that target one disease may have important spillover effects on the mortality and morbidity of other causes of death in order to better understand and evaluate the overall effects of disease specific programs it is necessary to understand and measure these spillover effects this paper provides a theoretical and empirical analysis of the incentives introduced by disease specific mortality interventions more precisely we discuss predictions about health investment incentives as implied by the competing risk model which is the empirical framework almost exclusively used to study multiple cause mortality we show that important complementary effects between niultiple causes of death operate to equalize the occurrence of the causes we argue that this complementarity should alter the evaluation of cause specific interventions by discrediting the argument that interventions are wasted because competing mortality risks are just around the corner in support of the existence of such complementarities we present substantive evidence from one of the most important public health programs ever introduced in developing countries the expanded programme on immunization epi of the united nations the paper is organized as follows section i provides a theoretical analysis arguing that the competing risk model of multiple causes of mortality corresponds to the leontief production function of survival this implies that there are inherent complementarities between investments in the prevention of cause specific mortality risks both on the individual level and on the aggregate level for competing risks the marginal benefit of investing to avoid one cause of death increases as a function of the survival rates of other causes the implications of this complementarity are important and have not received sufficient attention in theoretical or practical evaluations of causespecific interventions when mortality is treated as exogenous a disease specific intervention may seem wasteful if members of the targeted group are likely to die from a second cause as soon as the first has been eliminated then reducing the mortality from one cause of death would not appear to substantially increase life expectancy indeed this argument is repeatedly made by economists and demographers about medical care interventions in old age however it is sguided to use the preintervention background mortality when assessing the effectiveness of an interventionbehavior under one policy should not be assumed to prevail under a new policy as the leontief nature of competing risks predicts health investments will be focused upon he most immediate cause of death so that there are dow department of health policy and administration cb 7400 university of north carolina chapel hill nc 27599 philipson irving b harris graduate school of public policy studies department of economics and the law school university of chicago 1155 east 60th street chicago il 60637 sala i martin department of econornics columbia university 420 west 118th street 1005 new york ny 10027 and universitat pompeu fabra we are thankful to three anonymous referees for comments that substantially improved the paper and we especially acknowledge the contributions of jessica holmes who was a research assistant and co author on early drafts of this work we also thank gary becker kate howe steen jorgenson casey mulligan sherwin rosen paul schultz and participants at numerous workshops for discussions dow acknowledges financial support from national institute on aging grant no t32 ag00244 philipson from the national science foundation and the rockefeller foundation this research was begun while all authors were at yale university during 1994

a comparative welfare analysis of electoral systems with endogenous turnout i investigate the welfare properties of a broad class of electoral systems with endogenous turnout i find that the welfare ranking of electoral systems depends on the composition of the electorate if citizens have identical voting costs then all electoral systems that satisfy certain regularity properties generate the same level of welfare if voting costs are heterogeneous and the two parties are almost equally popular then majority rule mr generates the highest welfare among these systems i also analyse a model with heterogeneous and group specific costs i show that under certain conditions proportional representation dominates mr

a strategic model of social and economic networks we study the stability and efficiency of social and economic networks when self interested individuals can form or sever links first for two stylized models we characterize the stable and efficient networks there does not always exist a stable network that is efficient next we show that this tension persists generally to assure that there exists a stable network that is efficient one is forced to allocate resources to nodes that are not responsible for any of the production we characterize one such allocation rule the equal split rule and another rule that arises naturally from bargaining of the players

a deeper look at the proportionality turnout nexus evidence that turnout is higher under proportional representation pr than in majoritarian elections is overwhelming yet previous research has largely failed to explain why one line of argument maintains that higher turnout under pr is a by product of larger party systems however a larger number of parties has been demonstrated to depress turnout alternatively it is argued that majoritarian electoral systems tend to produce safe seats and that voters have little incentive to turn out there thus uneven turnout over electoral districts due to variable intensities of local competition is made responsible for the lower overall turnout empirical evidence on this conjecture is scant this article scrutinizes the relationship between electoral rules competition and turnout with district level data from 31 national elections results from a heteroscedastic model indicate that lower net turnout in majoritarian systems is indeed a consequence of uneven turnout over districts due to variable levels of lo

the marginal voter s curse an intuitive explanation for voter abstention is that a voter is uncertain which policy or candidate to vote for and so defers to the rest of the electorate to make the decision in majoritarian elections this has been formally modelled as a strategic response to the swing voter s curse which arises because the rare event of a pivotal vote conveys substantial information in electoral systems other than majority rule however the standard pivotal voting calculus may not apply this paper analyzes one such system namely proportional representation where additional votes continue to push the policy outcome in one direction or the other a new strategic incentive for abstention arises in that case to avoid the marginal voter s curse of pushing the policy outcome in the wrong direction intuitively conditioning on the rare event of a pivotal vote might seem to have a greater impact on behavior but the marginal voter s curse actually presents a larger disincentive for voting than the swing voter s curse this and other predictions of the model are con rmed empirically by a series of laboratory experiments

a note on probability distributions with increasing generalized failure rates distributions with an increasing generalized failure rate igfr have useful applications in pricing and supply chain contracting problems we provide alternative characterizations of the igfr property that lead to simplify verifying whether the igfr condition holds we also relate the limit of the generalized failure rate and the moments of a distribution

subscription mechanisms for network formation we analyze a model of network formation where the costs of forming links are publicly known but an individual s benefits are not known to the social planner the objective is to design a mechanism which not only ensures that an efficient network always forms in equilibrium but also ensures that the resulting net payoffs to the agents are equitable we propose two mechanisms towards this end in the first agents announce sequentially the set of players with whom they wish to form links and a cost contribution we show that all subgame perfect equilibria of this game result in the formation of an efficient network but the resulting net payoffs are asymmetric the second mechanism corrects this asymmetry through a two stage variant of the first mechanism we also discuss an extension of the basic model to cover the case of directed graphs and give conditions under which the proposed mechanisms are immune to deviations by coalitions

groups in rational turnout models a model of the strategic calculus of voting that incorporates the behavior of groups is presented if candidates choose different positions positive turnout is possible in partial equilibrium and is generally larger than that without group rationality nevertheless if candidates are probability maximizers and a unique general equilibrium exists the candidates will choose equivalent positions and turnout will be zero even with group rationality but if candidates care about both policy and winning they will choose different positions and cause positive turnout this turnout will be larger than that that would occur without group rationality group rationality alone cannot explain positive turnout in a general equilibrium theory of elections it does imply larger turnout in conjunction with policy oriented candidates than would be predicted solely by individualistic rational behavior

unequal participation democracy s unresolved dilemma presidential address american political science association 1996 low voter turnout is a serious democratic problem for five reasons 1 it means unequal turnout that is systematically biased against less well to do citizens 2 unequal turnout spells unequal political influence 3 u s voter turnout is especially low but measured as percent of voting age population it is also relatively low in most other countries 4 turnout in midterm regional local and supranational elections less salient but by no means unimportant elections tends to be especially poor 5 turnout appears to be declining everywhere the problem of inequality can be solved by institutional mechanisms that maximize turnout one option is the combination of voter friendly registration rules proportional representation infrequent elections weekend voting and holding less salient elections concurrently with the most important national elections the other option which can maximize turnout by itself is compulsory voting its advantages far outweigh the normative and practical objections to it

follow the leader theory and evidence on political participation using state by state voting data for u s presidential elections the authors observe that voter turnout is a positive function of predicted closeness to explain the strategic component of political participation they develop a follow the leader model political leaders expend effort according to their chance of being pivotal which depends on the expected closeness of the race at both state and national levels and how voters respond to their effort structural estimation supports this model for example a 1 percent increase in the predicted closeness at the state level stimulates leaders efforts which increases turnout by 0 34 percent

a theory of gradual coalition formation we study noncooperative multilateral bargaining games based on underlying tu games in which coalitions can renegotiate their agreements we distinguish between models in which players continue to bargain after implementing agreements reversible actions and models in which players who implement agreements must leave the game irreversible actions we show that renegotiation always results in formation of the grand coalition if actions are reversible but that the process may otherwise end with smaller coalitions on the other hand we show that the grand coalition cannot form in one step if the core of the game is empty irrespective of the reversibility of actions agreements between players form the basis of much that game theory seeks to explain there are obviously many useful ways to categorize such agreements in multilateral negotiations that is with more than two participants it seems natural to distinguish between cases in which the coalition forms in one step and those in which the coalition grows to its eventual size by attracting new members thus recipients of marshall aid collectively agreed to american terms at the ceec in 1947 whereas a strict subset of these countries agreed to the schuman plan in 1950 with the other current members joining the eu over time similarly negotiations on climate change culminated in universal agreement at rio in 1992 whereas india and china only agreed to reduce cfc emissions in london in 1990 after other countries had signed up to the montreal protocol finally un security council resolution 242 urged that a multilateral conference be set up to establish a comprehensive settlement in the middle east whereas the process initiated by the oslo agreements and arguably camp david has consisted of a sequence of agreements between israel and its neighbours we will refer to cases in which the grand coalition forms in one step as involving immediate coalition formation or icf for short and cases in which a coalition grows as involving gradual coalition formation

efficient bidding with externalities we implement a family of efficient proposals to share benefits generated in environments with externalities these proposals extend the shapley value to games with externalities and are parametrized through the method by which the externalities are averaged we construct two slightly different mechanisms one for environments with negative externalities and the other for positive externalities we show that the subgame perfect equilibrium outcomes of these mechanisms coincide with the sharing proposals

population growth and human capital investments theory and evidence this paper presents evidence from empirical studies that test hypotheses derived from models of household behavior pertaining to the interrelationships among population growth human capital and economic development these studies have exploited quasi natural experiments embodied in the cross area variability in the wage rates of children in a number of low income countries the intercouple variation in the biological propensity to conceive and the geographically selective introduction of new high yielding seed varieties in india in the period 1961 71 the different varieties of evidence support the hypotheses that alterations in the returns to human capital associated with exogenous technical change lead simultaneously to increases in human capital investments and to reductions in fertility and that the costliness of fertility control is a significant but modest factor in inhibiting human capital investments

vote trading in power sharing systems a laboratory investigation in theory decentralized vote trading in power sharing systems promotes a efficiency by assigning greater decision making power to individuals that care a lot about the election s outcome and b dispersion of benefits since even individuals that have little interest about the electoral result can profit by selling their votes we experimentally test these intuitions in the laboratory and find that indeed allowing real subjects to trade votes for money in such systems increases collective welfare and substantially redistributes it towards those that are less concerned about the election importantly these findings hold true under alternative trading institutions thus reinforcing their empirical relevance

the impact of exogenous child mortality on fertility a waiting time regression with dynamic regressors in this paper the authors develop and implement an econometric methodology estimating a family specific exogenous component of life expectancy in order to determine the responsiveness of fertility to exogenous changes in child mortality they use a generalized waiting time regression model applied to length of life which is viewed as the output of a production process they allow for family specific heterogeneity in duration of life and for time varying explanatory variables the heterogeneity component retrieved from the production function estimation is used to estimate the impact of exogenous child mortality on a measure of fertility the data concern 1938 children from 311 families included in the 1976 malaysian family life survey this paper was previously published in econometrica chicago ill vol 51 no 3 may 1983 pp 731 49 excerpt

a noncooperative coalitional bargaining game with random proposers abstract we extend the stahl rubinstein s alternating offer model ton person coalitional bargaining the key feature of the model is the random selection of proposers at every round no delay of agreement occurs in equilibrium for a super additive game in contrast to the fixed order model of chatterjeeet al rev econ stud 60 1993 463 477 when the discount factor of future payoffs is sufficiently high the agreement on the grand coalition is reached if and only if it has the largest value per capita among all coalitions moreover in the limit as the discount factor goes to one all players divide equally the value of the grand coalition regardless of who makes a proposal journal of economic literatureclassification numbers c72 c73 c78

heterogeneity intrafamily distribution and child health data were collected in candelaria colombia from 1968 to 1974 to evaluate the impact of child health services in all households in which there were any children under 6 years old to estimate the birth outcome equation and post birth health equation a subsample of 109 households was selected in which at least 2 children were born during the 7 year program the sample size was 238 children estimates of the parameters of the normalized weight equations were obtained using seemingly unrelated regression sur the family fixed effects procedure ffe and the lagged instrumental fixed effects technique life an illustrative dynamic model of intra family allocative behavior incorporating variations in individual child characteristics was formulated to show how both the timing of childbearing and child specific allocations vary with both family and child specific health endowments the information restrictions were used in the model associated with the sequencing of births to develop an estimation procedure which takes into account both intrafamily and interfamily heterogeneity longitudinal data on children and households compared estimates of the effects of birth order birth spacing and timing per capita food consumption inoculations and the incidence of breast feeding on the age standardized weight of children at 2 life cycle points at birth and within 6 months after birth the estimates indicated that healthier families for given income had more children and more closely spaced children but consumed no more food per capita than did less well endowed families these results imply that families behave so as to reduce inherent interfamily inequalities in child health however while the estimates suggest that the healthier the prior surviving child the more quickly parents are likely to have a subsequent child parents are also more likely to breastfeed an inherently healthier child

recognition for sale abstract i examine the consequences of letting players compete for bargaining power in a multilateral bargaining game in each period the right to propose an offer is sold to the highest bidder and all players pay their bids if players vote according to any rule in which no player has veto power then the first proposer captures the entire surplus if a full consensus is needed for an offer to be accepted then the first proposer shares the surplus with at most one other player and as the period length between offers vanishes one player may capture virtually the entire surplus in settings with a stochastic or an endogenous surplus players are unwilling to efficiently delay agreement or invest in the surplus

value consistency and random coalition formation abstract given an n player cooperative game and a feasible age n vector suppose that the players in a cooperative game are randomly split into two coalitions each with a randomly chosen leader the two leaders bargain bilaterally and each pays out of his share a wage to each member of his coalition as specified by the wage vector the wage vector is said to be consistent with the above procedure if it is equal to the ex ante expected payoff vector we prove that if all 2 coalition partitions are equally likely and if the bilateral bargain splits the surplus equally then the unique consistent payoff vector is the shapley value an equivalent consistency result holds for partitions with more than two elements these results are related to gul s 1989 result on noncooperative implementation of the shapley value journal of economic literature classification number 026