Focal points in pure coordination games: An experimental investigation

This paper reports an experimental investigation of the hypothesis that in coordination games, players draw on shared concepts of salience to identify focal points on which they can coordinate. The experiment involves games in which equilibria can be distinguished from one another only in terms of the way strategies are labelled. The games are designed to test a number of specific hypotheses about the determinants of salience. These hypotheses are generally confirmed by the results of the experiment.     

Another impossibility result for normal form games

It is shown that the axioms Cubitt and Sugden (1994; Economic J. 104: 798) impose on a theory of rationally justifiable play (TRJP) do not prevent the possibility that two players necessarily disagree concerning the probability they ascribe to the choice of a third player. This appears to indicate that those axioms are not sufficient for defining a `reasonable' TRJP. In addition, for the case in which a player's beliefs are statistically independent, conditions for a TRJP are suggested under which the existence of a quasi-strict equilibrium is sufficient, but the existence of a consistent n-pair is not, for defining a TRJP meeting those requirements.     

Evaluating Cooperative Game Theory in water resources

Two empirical applications of Cooperative Game Theory concerned with regional cooperation in the use of irrigation water are presented. Both studies attempt to derive income maximizing solutions for the participants and the related income allocation schemes. Distinction is made between transferable and non-transferable utility situations. The reasonableness and the acceptability of the schemes derived are later critically evaluated. Main findings are: (1) use of utility functions leads to problems in gains allocations, (2) the Core concept may be useless in this application because since it is either difficult to calculate or is empty in many cases, (3) gains allocation and the derived core are heavily dependent on probabilities of coalitions formation in the Shapley value or the Generalized Shapley Value.During the course of this research in The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.On leave from The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.     

Bribes,power, and managerial control in corporate voting games

Proxy fights have received comparatively little attention relative to the more popular methods for corporate control transfer: merger and tender offers. This paper presents an analytic model of the proxy contest as a cooperative game with four players: management, passive shareholders, insurgent shareholders and a trust fund. The power of the players and the effectiveness of certain managerial actions is discussed.     

Comparative accuracy of value solutions in non-sidepayment games with empty core

This article reports a test of the predictive accuracy of solution concepts in cooperative non-sidepayment n-person games with empty core. Six solutions were tested. Three of these were value solutions (i.e., -transfer value, -transfer nucleolus, and -transfer disruption value) and three were equilibrium solutions (deterrence set, stable set, and imputation set). The test was based on a laboratory experiment utilizing 5-person, 2-choice normal form games with empty core; other related data sets were also analyzed. Goodness-of-fit results based on discrepancy scores show that the three value solutions are about equally accurate in predicting outcomes, and that all three are substantially more accurate than the other solutions tested.     

On generalized measures of realization in uncertain environments

We concern ourselves with the problem of determining the overall degree or measure of realization of an object based upon its occurrence in a collection of individual phenomena. We show that while probability is the classic measure of this type, it is but one of a whole family of possible such measures. We use the OWA operator to provide this family of measures. We investigate the situation in which our observations are both specific elements and subsets of some base set.