a theory of disagreement in repeated games with bargaining this paper proposes a new approach to equilibrium selection in repeated games with transfers supposing that in each period the players bargain over how to play although the bargaining phase is cheap talk following a generalized alternating offer protocol sharp predictions arise from three axioms two axioms allow the players to meaningfully discuss whether to deviate from their plan the third embodies a theory of disagreement that play under disagreement should not vary with the manner in which bargaining broke down equilibria that satisfy these axioms exist for all discount factors and are simple to construct all equilibria generate the same welfare optimal play under agreement generally requires suboptimal play under disagreement whether patient players attain efficiency depends on both the stage game and the bargaining protocol the theory extends naturally to games with imperfect public monitoring and heterogeneous discount factors and yields new insights into classic relational contracting questions

pre play research in a model of bank runs se estudia un modelo de corrida bancaria en el que los depositantes no llegaron a un consenso sobre la accion a elegir pero pueden informarse acerca de las intenciones de los otros jugadores la propiedad de equilibrio indeterminado reaparece en el juego con adquisicion de informacion en el escenario bajo analisis el equilibrio con niveles positivos de adquisicion de informacion resulta en mayores probabilidades de quiebra del banco la correlacion en las senales aumenta el espacio de parametros para el cual existen equilibrios con niveles positivos de adquisicion de informacion y mayor probabilidad de quiebra del banco

household electricity end use consumption results from econometric and engineering models information about total electricity consumption is available for most households however the electricity consumption related to different end uses e g space heating lighting and services from household appliances are usually not metered metering data are costly to achieve and in this paper we study two methods for end use estimation which can be applied on household data for appliance holdings demographic and economic variables the first method is the engineering model which has been used to calculate the so far only documented norwegian end use results applied on data from a norwegian energy survey the second method is an econometric conditional demand model applied on data from the same survey we compare the numerical results from the two models and give some recommendations regarding choice of end use approach and what questions to implement in household surveys designed to disaggregate electricity consumption

transaction costs communication and spatial coordination in payment for ecosystem services schemes agricultural producer participation and spatial coordination of land use decisions are key components for enhancing the effective delivery of ecosystem services from private land however inducing participation in payment for ecosystem services schemes for coordinating land management choices is challenging from a policy design perspective owing to transaction costs associated with participation this paper employs a laboratory experiment to investigate the impact of such costs on participation and land use in the context of an agglomeration bonus ab scheme the ab creates a coordination game with multiple nash equilibria related to alternative spatially coordinated land use patterns the experiment varies transaction costs between two levels high and low which affects the risks and payoffs of coordinating on the different equilibria additionally an option to communicate is implemented between neighbors arranged on a local network to facilitate spatial coordination results indicate a significant difference in participation and performance under high and low transaction costs with lower uptake and performance when transaction costs are high these effects are however impacted by transaction costs faced in the past communication improves both ab participation rates and performance with the effect being greater for participants facing high transaction costs

comparing ranking and contingent valuation for valuing human lives applying nested and non nested logit models the aim of this paper is to investigate whetherrespondents perceive a discrete choice contingentvaluation dc cvm question differently from a rankingquestion we combine the two approaches to valuepublic projects that try to prevent people from dyingprematurely the combined valuation procedure enablesus to investigate the internal consistency of theutility structure between choices applying nested andnon nested logit models if the preference structureis allowed to shift the relative utility weights ofthe attributes differ between the valuation questions and the willingness to pay wtp estimate from thecombined procedure changes

modelling aggregate domestic electricity demand in ghana an autoregressive distributed lag bounds cointegration approach in spite of the varying supply boosting efforts made by various governments to deal with the existing demand supply gap in the electricity sector the incessant growth in aggregate domestic electricity demand has made these efforts futile as an objective this paper attempts to identify the factors responsible for the historical growth trends in aggregate domestic electricity demand quantifying their effects both in the short run and long run periods using the ardl bounds cointegration approach and the sample period 1975 to 2005 in the long run real per capita gdp industry efficiency structural changes in the economy and degree of urbanisation are identified as the main driving force behind the historical growth trend in aggregate domestic electricity demand however in the short run real per capita gdp industry efficiency and degree of urbanisation are the main drivers of aggregate domestic electricity demand industry efficiency is the only factor that drives aggregate domestic electricity demand downwards however the negative efficiency effect is insufficient to have outweighed the positive income output and demographic effects hence the continual growth in aggregate domestic electricity demand as a policy option we recommend that appropriate electricity efficiency standards be implemented at the industry level

management of transnational commons coordination publicness and treaty formation this paper focuses on the formation of treaties to manage transnational commons when efforts must be coordinated among a minimal sized group so as to make cooperation worthwhile by focusing on mixed strategy equilibria we are con cerned with instances where the intentions of others are uncertain the number of required participants the pattern of payoffs transaction costs and the underlying technology of public supply aggregation are key factors behind the achievement of coordina tion we apply our analysis to explain the outcome of negotiations on stratospheric ozone depletion global warming acid rain and tropical deforesta tion jel q20 d70

quebec residential electricity demand a microeconometric approach in this paper we use a micro approach to model quebec residential demand for electricity the model incorporates a joint continuous discrete decision framework which allows for interrelationships between decisions on electricity related durable holdings and those on usage in the spirit of recent studies which used a continuous discrete frame work the model parameters are estimated using a two stage approach at the first stage the decisions regarding space and water heating systems are modelled with a very flexible multinomial probit mnp framework then at the second stage the demand for electricity conditional on the chosen heating system is estimated using ordinary least squares and a correction is applied in order to eliminate a potential estimation bias the estimated short run and long run price and income elasticities have the correct signs and are rather small as is expected under such circumstances

alternating announcements cheap talk abstract we model alternating announcements cheap talk while discussing the efficiency consequences of explicitly allowing the no agreement outcome of the game with communication to vary with players cheap talk announcements our results give further consistency to the argument that a cheap talk extension does not necessarily imply efficiency in the play of the original game moreover we characterize the extent of such inefficiency and show it to be similar to that obtained by rabin rabin m 1994 journal of economic theory 63 370 391 despite the strategic incentives driving our results differing from rabin s we also show that efficiency is obtained when the history of alternating announcements is ignored when an agreement is not reached

fertility decline as a coordination problem abstract the so called diffusion of innovation approach is often used in explanations of historical and contemporary fertility declines we investigate this issue by developing a new theoretical analysis which combines economic and sociological reasoning particular attention is devoted to the role of social networks for the selection of equilibria in situations when fertility decline constitutes a coordination problem we show that the effect of networks depends on the particular interaction among individuals and on the prevailing socioeconomic conditions information networks can only speed up a fertility transition that would also take place in the absence of social interaction while coordination networks can facilitate demographic change in societies that would otherwise be caught in a malthusian situation

choosing the competition and patent licensing this article examines licensing as a means of choosing the competitors which a patentee monopolist will face in the period after the patent expires the queue of entrants consists of two firms which differ in their relative strengths as competitors for example by size or level of marginal cost by structuring the industry to be composed of weak competitors the incumbent is able to prolong its dominant position in the industry after the patent expires examples are presented in which the evidence suggests that choosing the competition was an important motivation of the licensor s behavior

decentralization duplication and delay we argue that although decentralization has advantages in finding low cost solutions these advantages are accompanied by coordination problems which lead to delay or duplication of effort or both consequently decentralization is desirable when there is little urgency or a great deal of private information but it is strictly undesirable in urgent problems when private information is less important we also examine the effect of large numbers and find that coordination problems disappear in the limit if distributions are common knowledge

fuel resource scheduling the long term problem long term fuel scheduling addresses the problem of optimum allocation of fuels to various generating units using mixed and shared fuels subject to yearly and monthly constraints inventory constraints generation availability constraints and load require ments both energy and capacity this problem is formulated as a network flow optimization problem feasibility of the resulting fuel consumption plan with respect to fuel constraints and its optimality with respect to cost of fuel purchases are assured by the network flow algorithm feasibility with respect to the load duration and generation availability are assured by defining appropriate fictitious branches in the network the limits on these branches are calculated by the method of cumulants the unit priorities in each month are modified by an iterative procedure on the basis of both fuel price and fuel availability as seen by the network flow algorithm results for a 17 unit 17 contract test system over one year are presented to illustrate various aspects of the long term fuel resource scheduling problem

does history matter only when it matters little the case of city industry location when will an industry subject to agglomeration economies move from an old high cost site to a new low cost site it is argued that history in the form of sunk costs resulting from the operation of many firms at a site creates a first mover disadvantage that can prevent relocation it is demonstrated that developers of industrial parks can partly overcome this inertia through discriminatory pricing of land over time and empirical evidence is provided that they actually engage in such behavior it is also shown that other aspects of developer land sale strategy can be a source of information on the nature of interfirm externalities

stochastic security constrained unit commitment this paper presents a stochastic model for the long term solution of security constrained unit commitment scuc the proposed approach could be used by vertically integrated utilities as well as the isos in electricity markets in this model random disturbances such as outages of generation units and transmission lines as well as load forecasting inaccuracies are modeled as scenario trees using the monte carlo simulation method for dual optimization coupling constraints among scenarios are relaxed and the optimization problem is decomposed into deterministic long term scuc subproblems for each deterministic long term scuc resource constraints represent fuel and emission constraints in the case of vertically integrated utilities and energy constraints in the case of electricity markets lagrangian relaxation is used to decompose subproblems with long term scuc into tractable short term mip based scuc subproblems without resource constraints accordingly penalty prices lagrangian multipliers are signals to coordinate the master problem and small scale subproblems computational requirements for solving scenario based optimization models depend on the number of scenarios in which the objective is to minimize the weighted average generation cost over the entire scenario tree in large scale applications the scenario reduction method is introduced for enhancing a tradeoff between calculation speed and accuracy of long term scuc solution numerical simulations indicate the effectiveness of the proposed approach for solving the stochastic security constrained unit commitment

economic methodology in a nutshell he literature on economic methodology is concerned mainly with questions of theory confirmation or disconfirmation or empirical theory choice the central question is usually how one can tell whether a particular bit of economics is good science economists would like methodologists to provide the algorithm for doing good economic science and they want the algorithm to vindicate their own practice and to reveal the foolishness of those who do economics differently for example milton friedman 1953 tells economists that good theories are those that provide correct and useful predictions while paul samuelson 1947 1963 tells economists to formulate theories with operational concepts that are ideally logically equivalent to their descriptive consequences in my view not only are these and most other specific views on theory appraisal mistaken but the concern with problems of empirical appraisal is exaggerated for there are also interesting methodological questions to consider both normative and descriptive concerning the structure strategy goals and heuristics of various economic theories for example few writers on economic methodology recognize that the activities of formulating economic models and investigating their implications are a sort of conceptual exploration instead most mistakenly regard these activities as offering empirical hypotheses and assess them in terms of some philosophical model of confirmation or falsification as a tendentious survey of standard methodological literature this essay will however share its preoccupation with the empirical appraisal of theory microeconomic theory in particular i shall in particular discuss four approaches to praising or damning microeconomic theory that have dominated methodological discussions

contracts and externalities how things fall apart a single principal interacts with several agents offering them contracts the crucial assumption of this paper is that the outside option payoffs of the agents depend positively on how many uncontracted or free agents there are we study how such a principal unwelcome though he may be approaches the problem of contract provision to agents when coordination failure among the latter group is explicitly ruled out two variants are considered when the principal cannot re approach agents there is a unique equilibrium in which contract provision is split up into two phases in phase 1 simultaneousoffers at good though varying terms are made to a number of agents in phase 2 offers must be made sequentially and their values are discontinuously lower they are close to the very lowest of all the outside options when the principal can repeatedly approach the same agent there is a multiplicity of equilibria in some of these the agents have the power to force delay they can hold off the principal s overtures temporarily but they must succumb in finite time in both models despite beingable to coordinate their actions agents cannot resist an invasion by the principal and hold to their best payoff it is in this sense that things eventually fall apart

naked exclusion an experimental study of contracts with externalities this paper reports the results of an experiment designed to assess the ability of an incumbent seller to profitably foreclose a market with exclusive contracts we use the strategic environment described by rasmusen ramseyer and wiley 1991 and segal and whinston 2000 where entry is unprofitable when sufficiently many downstream buyers sign exclusive contracts with the incumbent when discrimination is impossible the game resembles a stag hunt coordination game in which the buyers payoffs are endogenously chosen by the incumbent seller exclusion occurs when the buyers fail to coordinate on their preferred equilibrium two way non binding pre play communication among the buyers lowers the power of exclusive contracts and induces more generous contract terms from the seller when discrimination and communication are possible the exclusion rate rises divide and conquer strategies are observed more frequently when buyers can communicate with each other exclusion rates are significantly higher when the buyers payoffs are endogenously chosen rather than exogenously given finally secret offers are shown to decrease the incumbent s power to profitably exclude

action characteristics as predictors of competitive responses a central question in competitive dynamics is whether a competitive response can be predicted this study links various characteristics of actions with the total number and the time lag of competitors responses the hypothesized relationships were tested with a sample of competitive moves among u s airlines the results suggested that responses are influenced by the characteristics of the actions that evoked them specifically the total number of competitors affected by an action and the importance to these competitors of the markets under attack by the action increase the number of competitive responses strategic as opposed to tactical actions or actions which require substantial implementation efforts reduce the number and delay the timing of rivals counteractions finally contrary to prediction competitors who have a high stake in the markets under attack by a competitive move react slowly

announcement entry and preemption when consumers have switching costs i study the incentives of innovating firms to announce their entry in markets in which consumers incur a cost of switching from one product to another announcing entry can prevent the lock in of potential demand before the launch of the new product at the same time however the incumbent firm learns about the impending entry and has the opportunity to cut prices and preempt the market in equilibrium entrants do not always announce and i show that this behavior maximizes ex ante total welfare by contrast consumers might be better off with a ban on announcements when the entrant s claims are not verifiable vaporware announcements arise in equilibrium and i demonstrate that they can be beneficial for consumers

asymmetric equilibria in symmetric games with many players abstract we show that in symmetric games with many players an asymmetric pure strategy equilibrium can be thought of as the approximate outcome of the play of a specific symmetric mixed strategy equilibrium

when does coordination require centralization this paper compares centralized and decentralized coordination when manag ers are privately informed and communicate strategically we consider a multi divisional organization in which decisions must be adapted to local conditions but also coordinated with each other information about local conditions is dispersed and held by self interested division managers who communicate via cheap talk the only available formal mechanism is the allocation of decision rights we show that a higher need for coordination improves horizontal com

burning money and pseudo first mover advantages an experimental study on forward induction abstract the mere potential for one player to burn money prior to play has been shown in theory to be an effective device to select this player s most preferred outcome e g in the battle of the sexes game j econ theory 48 1989 476 j econ theory 57 1992 36 in this study we assess the behavioral relevance of this theoretical claim it is shown that its validity depends on whether the game is played in extensive or normal form in extensive form games first movers benefit substantially from having the opportunity to burn money in advance the effect is much weaker in the normal form game however in two control treatments first movers who can select between two related games gain an advantage although standard forward induction arguments do not have any bite these results suggest that we need to make further theoretical advances to understand the role of physical timing and first mover advantages in games

theory and experiments on spatial competition we present theoretical and experimental results on spatial competition between two firms firms choose locations simultaneously along a line representing a linear market identical consumers with non increasing demand functions are uniformly distributed along this line we solve for symmetric equilibrium payoffs in an infinitely repeated game for the case of linear demand and an arbitrary discount factor the set of equilibriums found includes both competitive and collusive payoffs in laboratory experiments in which the final period was unknown to the players in advance we observed both competitive and collusive outcomes non binding communication led to collusion

leadership beliefs and coordination an explorative discussion although recent economics contributions represent important strides forward in the understanding of leadership behavior the cognitive and symbolic dimensions of the phenomenon have attracted virtually no interests from economists and game theorists i argue that an understanding of these dimensions may be founded on coordination games particularly to the extent that these illustrate interactive belief formation in this context leadership is defined as the taking of actions that coordinate the complementary actions of many people through the creation of belief conditions that at least substitute for common knowledge and where these actions characteristically consists of some act of communication directed at those being led the concept of common knowledge or its approximation by means of notions of common belief is argued to be particularly important to understanding leadership thus leaders may establish common knowledge conditions and assist the coordination of strategies in this way or make decisions in situations where coordination problems persist in spite of common knowledge acknowledgments

pricing information goods a strategic analysis of the selling and pay per use mechanisms we analyze two pricing mechanisms for information goods these mechanisms are selling where up front payment allows unrestricted use and pay per use where payments are tailored to use we analytically model a market where consumers differ in use frequency and where use on a pay per use basis invokes a psychological cost associated with the well known ticking meter effect we demonstrate that pay per use yields higher profits in a monopoly provided the associated psychological cost is low in a duopoly one firm uses selling and the other uses pay per use here in contrast to the monopoly selling yields higher profits than pay per use we demonstrate that surprisingly the profits of both duopolists can increase as the psychological cost associated with pay per use increases next we show that uncertainty in consumer use frequency does not affect pay per use in a monopoly but lowers profits from selling in a duopoly both the seller and the pay per use provider obtain lower profits when use frequency is uncertain we also analyze how pricing mechanism performance is affected if the firms cannot commit to prices if the pay per use provider offers a two part tariff and if consumers are risk averse

evolutionary stability in unanimity games with cheap talk abstract this paper studies a class of games of perfectly coinciding interests with a preplay communication stage added if messages are costless cheap talk there are inefficient nash equilibria even under communication however i show that only strategies that induce efficient outcomes are evolutionary stable

household consumption of electricity in brazil between 1985 and 2013 abstract this article describes the electricity consumption in brazilian residences between 1985 and 2013 through linear regressions the explanatory variables considered were the number of households effective consumption of families as a proxy for family income and electricity tariff for households to deal with the power generation crisis of 2001 we have introduced a dummy variable in the form of a step function with such explanatory variables we were able to account for the reduction of household electricity consumption caused by the policies conducted in 2001 and their permanent consequences the regression presented coefficient of determination of 0 9892 and the several statistic tests conducted assured the existence of long term relation between the electricity consumption in residences and the explanatory variables the obtained elasticities for the household consumption of electricity with respect to number of residences family income and residential tariff of electricity were 1 534 0 095 0 189 0 049 and 0 230 0 060 respectively these results allowed understanding the evolution over time of the household consumption of electricity in brazil they suggest that the electric sector in brazil should pursue an active policy to manage demand of residential electricity using tariffs as a means to control it

norwegian residential electricity demand a microeconomic assessment of the growth from 1976 to 1993 abstract the norwegian residential electricity consumption increased by an average of 3 annually during the period 1976 1993 political signals indicate that the growth in norwegian residential energy consumption should be reduced and that it may be necessary to increase energy taxes based on data for the sample of households from the annual consumer expenditure survey we study factors that are of importance explaining the growth in norwegian residential electricity demand during this period nearly half of the growth is due to an increase in the number of households while the rest reflects an increase in average consumption per household the increase in average consumption per household is due to an increasing number of households possessing electric household appliances such as dryers and dishwashers an increase in real disposable household income and in the floor space of dwellings

a dynamic model of bertrand competition with entry abstract this paper analyzes a simple repeated game of simultaneous entry and pricing we report a surprising property of the symmetric equilibrium solution if the number of potential competitors is increased above two the market breaks down with higher probability and the competitive outcome becomes less likely more potential competition lowers welfare another bertrand paradox the model can also be applied to auctions to explore whether a revenue maximizing auctioneer should restrict the number of bidders if bidder participation is costly

cheap talk coordination and entry we show how costless nonbinding nonverifiable communication cheap talk can achieve partial coordination among potential entrants into a natural monopoly industry where the payoffs are qualitatively like the battle of the sexes the analysis would apply equally in other economic situations with such payoffs for example bargaining under complete information or choosing compatibility standards while cheap talk helps achieve asymmetric coordination in a symmetric mixed strategy equilibrium it cannot achieve complete coordination if the game involves even a small amount of conflict

vaporware suddenware and trueware new product preannouncements under market uncertainty a firm may want to preannounce its plans to develop a new product in order to stimulate future demand but given that such communications can affect rivals incentives to develop the same new product a firm may decide to preannounce untruthfully in order to deter competitors we examine an incumbent s preannouncement strategy when there is uncertainty regarding the commercial viability of a new product opportunity and a threat of rival entry each firm has a private assessment of the market potential for the new product two competitive incentives arise for the incumbent in terms of discouraging rival entry it can use preemptive communication or it can remain silent and instill a pessimistic market potential outlook we find that an incumbent prefers to follow a vaporware strategy i e declares plans to pursue a new product opportunity even when it may have no development intentions when its market forecasting capabilities are weak and the demand side benefits from preannouncing are small by contrast when the incumbent has strong market forecasting capabilities and the demand side benefits are small the incumbent adopts a suddenware strategy i e remains silent about its new product plans even when it actually plans to develop the new product finally when its market forecasting capabilities are strong and the demand side benefits are large the incumbent prefers to engage in a trueware strategy i e truthfully preannounces development plans we show that an interplay between competition related and demand related considerations is what allows trueware to emerge as an equilibrium in the absence of any ex post cost to engaging in vaporware in an extension we let the incumbent s actual development plans leak out and allow the entrant to wait and learn those plans prior to setting a research and development level we identify conditions for the entrant to postpone development despite the risk of being late to market as well as conditions for the entrant to commence development immediately despite not knowing the incumbent s plans based on the observed preannouncement strategy

the microeconometric approach to modelling energy demand some results for uk households the paper is concerned with the empirical modeling of domestic demand for energy at the level of the individual household a model of household energy expenditures and energy using durable ownership is described estimation takes place using a pooled sample of households drawn from the repeated cross sections of the annual family expenditure survey fes price and income elasticities are found to be highly dependent on individual household characteristics type of house tenure energy using durable ownership and outside temperature finally the results are placed in a policy relevant context copyright 1991 by oxford university press

impacts on electricity consumption of household appliances in austria a comparison of time series and cross section analyses abstract in this paper electricity consumption of household appliances in austria is investigated to extract the impact of various parameters two different approaches are compared a time series from 1960 1995 and a cross section analysis these analyses lead to the following results the price elasticity is virtually zero the income elasticity is high but decreasing the major conclusion is that with respect to appliance electricity consumption the rebound effect is low and hence efficiency is the most important slower of electricity consumption therefore standards labelling and other instruments focusing on an increase of efficiency are the most important tools of energy policy for this end use

cheap talk can matter in bargaining this paper describes an intuitive way in which cheap talk can matter in a twostage bargaining game in which talk may be followed by serious negotiation the intuition that all buyers would claim to have low reservation prices is incorrect in our model instead if good faith participation is endogenously determined then the parties can use talk to trade off bargaining position against the probability of continued negotiation our cheap talk equilibrium features bargaining behavior that could not be equilibrium behavior in the absence of talk

coalition proof equilibrium we characterize the agreements that the players of a noncooperative game may reach when they can communicate prior to play but they cannot reach binding agreements a coalition proof equilibrium is a correlated strategy from which no coalition has an improving and self enforcing deviation we show that any correlated strategy whose support is contained in the set of actions that survive the iterated elimination of strictly dominated strategies and weakly pareto dominates every other correlated strategy whose support is contained in that set is a coalition proof equilibrium consequently the unique equilibrium of a dominance solvable game is coalition proof journal of economic literature classification

unmediated communication in repeated games with imperfect monitoring we show that any correlated equilibrium payoff of two player repeated games with imperfect monitoring and without discounting can be reached as the nash equilibrium payoff of the game extended by a universal mechanism of unmediated communication this result holds regardless the particular concept of equlibrium involved upper lower banach or uniform equlibrium the communication mechanism is built up by using commutative one way functions these functions are designed with the help of cryptographic tools

adaptive fuel allocation using pseudo fuel prices the authors outline a practical adaptive fuel allocation approach the approach uses pseudo fuel prices as decision variables as a result the fuel allocation decision can be conveniently implemented in system operation by using the pseudo fuel prices to dispatch generation a lower pseudo price usually results in higher fuel consumption and a higher pseudo price usually results in lower fuel consumption in the proposed approach the systematic criterion for adaptively identifying the need for reschedulings is based on the absolute change in each pseudo fuel price various aspects of the proposed approach are discussed and its application to a midwestern utility system is illustrated

testing viability of cross subsidy using time variant price elasticities of industrial demand for electricity indian experience abstract indian electric tariffs are characterized by very high rates for industrial and commercial classes to permit subsidized electric consumption by residential and agricultural customers we investigate the viability of this policy using monthly data for 1997 2003 on electric consumption by a few large industrial customers under the aegis of a small distribution company in the state of uttar pradesh for a given price cost ratio it can be shown that if the cross subsidizing class electricity demand is sufficiently elastic increasing the class rates fail to recover incremental cross subsidy necessary to support additional revenues for subsidized classes this suboptimality is tested by individually estimating time variant price elasticities of demand for these industrial customers using box cox and linear regressions we find that at least for some of these customers cross subsidy was suboptimal prior to as late as october 2001 when rates were changed following reforms

modeling the forms of international cooperation distribution versus information the problems of distribution and information impede international cooperation they arise when actors select how they will cooperate an exploration of the interaction between these problems using a limited information model of cooperation leads to six conclusions first leadership solutions to coordination problems always exist but leadership here is very different from hegemonic provision of public goods second actors can cooperate in the face of anarchy even without a shadow of the future third diffuse reciprocal strategies arise naturally in coordination problems fourth norms and institutions are intertwined within successful cooperation fifth the form of cooperation on an issue varies with the relative importance of distribution and information finally and most important distributional and informational problems interfere with each other arrangements to cooperate can successfully address one but not both of these problems

communication coordination and nash equilibrium i note a methodological problem in studying the role of pre play communication in ensuring equilibrium to deal with this problem i define a solution concept for the extended game in which talk is followed by play that is intermediate between nash equilibrium and rationalizability in some games our solution concept implies a nash outcome while in others it does not

can the government talk cheap communication announcements and cheap talk a great deal of attention has recently been focused on communication in economic contexts while some models of credible announcements have been based on reputational forces or penalties imposed by third parties as in sobel 21 and cothren 4 several recent papers have addressed the possibility of communication through cheap talk that is talk in situations with no explicit penalties for deception perhaps the most prominent application of cheap talk in the literature is the recent model of federal reserve announcements by stein 22 this paper will show that cheap talk equilibria of the sort modeled by stein and others often depend in a fundamental way on implausible discontinuities in public responses to government announcements that is cheap talk equilibria are frequently only possible if certain infinitesimally small changes in government announcements are capable of causing large discontinuous changes in public expectations and behavior intuitively if public expectations are a continuous function of government announcements then the government can fine tune these expectations the government will therefore often be tempted to deviate from the cheap talk equilibrium announcements in order to manipulate expectations this causes the equilibrium to unravel discontinuous public reactions sometimes prevent these equilibria from unraveling because they convert continuous choice problems which allow manipulative fine tuning into discrete choice problems where such fine tuning is impossible these discontinuities are implausible however and this may often rule out cheap talk as a realistic model of governmental policy announcements 2