Tinbergen Institute Seminar
Workshop on Economic Theory and Game Theory
Friday December 13, 2013
Program:
10.30-11.30 Zaifu Yang, University of York
A Competitive Partnership Formation Process 11.30-11.45 Coffee break
11.45-12.45 Burak Can, Maastricht University Update Monotonicity and Applications
12.45-13.45 Lunch
13.45-14.45 Francesco Nava, London School of Economics
Decentralized Bargaining and Efficiency: Commitment and Separation in Assignment Economies
14.45-15.00 Coffee break
15.00-16.00 Herbert Hamers, CentER,Tilburg University,
Price of anarchy in sequencing situations and the impossibility to coordinate 16.00-16.15 Coffee break
16.15-17.15 Annick Laruelle, University of the Basque Country
To approve or not to approve: this is not the only question
17.15-18.15 Drinks (op TI) 18.15- Dinner
Venue:
Tinbergen Institute Amsterdam Gustav Mahlerplein 117, Room 1.01
1082 MS Amsterdam
Tel. +31 (0)20 525 1600, email: tinbergen@tinbergen.nl
The Tinbergen Institute is a few minutes walk from station Amsterdam-Zuid. Further directions and a map can be found on the webpage of the TI: www.tinbergen.nl/contact
For information contact Rene van den Brink: jrbrink@feweb.vu.nl or g.vander.laan@vu.nl
Please inform us if you want to join for lunch.
Abstracts
Speaker: Zaifu Yang, University of York
Title: A Competitive Partnership Formation Process
Abstract: A group of heterogenous agents may form partnerships in pairs. All single agents as well as all partnerships generate values. If two agents choose to cooperate, they need to specify how to split their joint value among one another. In equilibrium, which may or may not exist, no agents have incentives to break up or form new partnerships. This paper proposes a dynamic competitive adjustment process that always either finds an equilibrium or exclusively disproves the existence of any equilibrium in finitely many steps. When an equilibrium exists, partnership and revenue distribution will be automatically and endogenously determined by the process.
Moreover, several fundamental properties of the equilibrium solution and the model are derived.
Speaker: Burak Can, Maastricht University Title: Update Monotonicity and Applications
Abstract: Can & Storcken (2012) focus on a new axiom: Update monotonicity for preference rules, i.e., social welfare functionales. Although many so-called impossibility theorems for social choice rules are based on or related to monotonicity conditions, this appealing condition is satisfied by several non-trivial preference rules. We investigate possible implications of these results in other problems, such as marriage markets, college admissions problems. The relation of update monotonicity to Maskin monotonicity is also discussed in matching markets. Some open questions in other game theoretical problems are also pointed out.
Speaker: Francesco Nava, London School of Economics
Title: Decentralized Bargaining and Efficiency: Commitment and Separation in Assignment Economies.
Abstract: The paper presents two decentralized models of bargaining in assignment economies. In either model bargaining is non-cooperative, fully decentralized, and in Markov strategies. The two models differ only in the option to renegotiate existing agreements. When offers cannot be renegotiated, frictions may arise as bargaining power evolves endogenously. Results on commitment present necessary and sufficient conditions for efficiency, and detail frictions arising when such conditions fail. When offers can be renegotiated instead, the analysis establishes that efficient equilibria always exist.
Speaker: Herbert Hamers, CentER,Tilburg University.
Title: Price of anarchy in sequencing situations and the impossibility to coordinate
Abstract: Scheduling jobs of decentralized decision makers that are in competition will usually lead to cost inefficiencies. This cost inefficiency is studied using the Price of Anarchy (PoA), i.e. the ratio between the worst Nash equilibrium cost and the cost attained at the centralized optimum. First, we provide a tight upperbound for the PoA that depends on the number of machines involved. Second, we show that it is impossible to design a scheduled-based coordinating mechanism in which a Nash equilibrium enforces the centralized or first best optimum. Finally, by simulations we illustrate that on average the PoA is relatively small with respect to the established tight.
Speaker: Annick Laruelle, University of the Basque Country Title: To approve or not to approve: this is not the only question
Abstract: The voting rule considered in this paper belongs to a large class of voting systems, called “range voting” or “utilitarian voting”, where each voter rates each candidate with the help of a given evaluation scale and the winner is the candidate with the highest total score. In approval voting the evaluation scale only consists of two levels: 1 (approval) and 0 (non approval). However non approval may mean disapproval or just indifference or even absence of sufficient knowledge for evaluating the candidate. In this paper we propose a characterization of a rule (that we refer to as dis&approval voting) that allows for a third level in the evaluation scale. The three levels have the following interpretation: 1 means a proval, 0 means indifference, abstention or “do not
know”, and -1 means disapproval.
