Thursday December 11, 2014
Program:
10.30-11.30 Juan Moreno-Ternero, Universidad Pablo de Olavide, Seville | Taxation and Poverty
11.30-11.45 Coffee break
11.45-12.45 Lars Ehlers, Université de Montréal | Transferring Ownership of Public Housing to Existing Tenants: A Mechanism Design Approach
12.45-13.45 Lunch
13.45-14.45 Hannu Salonen, University of Turku, Finland | Equilibria and Centrality in Link Formation Games
14.45-15.00 Coffee break
15.00-16.00 Holger Strulik, University of Goettingen | Innovation Across the World: A Network Approach
16.00-16.15 Coffee break
16.15-17.15 Dries Vermeulen, Maastricht University | Optimal Finitely Additive Strategies in Zero-Sum Games
17.15-18.15 Drinks (at TI)
18.15- Dinner
Abstracts
Speaker: Juan Moreno-Ternero, Universidad Pablo de Olavide, Seville, Spain
Title: Taxation and Poverty (joint with Chris Chambers, UCSD)
Abstract:.We explore the implications of four natural axioms in taxation: continuity (small changes in the data of a taxation problem should not lead to large changes in the tax allocation, equal treatment of equals (agents with the same pre-tax incomes pay equal taxes), consistency (the way in which a group allocates a tax burden only depends on their own after-tax incomes and composition down (an increase in the tax burden is handled according to agents’ current post-tax incomes). The combination of the four axioms characterizes a large family of rules, which we call generalized equal-sacrifice rules, encompassing the so-called equal-sacrifice rules (such as the flat tax), as well as constrained equal-sacrifice rules (such as the head tax), and exogenous poverty-line rules (such as the leveling tax, and some of its possible compromises with the previous ones).
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Speaker: Lars Ehlers, Université de Montréal, Canada
Title: Transferring Ownership of Public Housing to Existing Tenants: A Mechanism Design Approach (with T. Andersson and L.-G. Svensson)
Abstract: This paper explores situations where tenants in public houses, in a specific neighborhood, are given the legislated right to buy the houses they live in or can choose or remain in their houses and pay the regulated rent. This type of legislation has been passed in many European countries in the last 30-35 years (the U.K. Housing Act 1980 is a leading example). The main objective with this type of legislation is to transfer the ownership of the houses from the public authority to the tenants. To achieve this goal, selling prices of the public houses are typically heavily subsidized. The legislating body then faces a trade-off between achieving the goals of the legislation and allocating the houses efficiently. This paper investigates this specific tradeoff and identifies an allocation rule that is individually rational, equilibrium selecting, and group non-manipulable in a restricted preference domain that contains “almost all” preference profiles. In this restricted domain, the identified rule is the equilibrium selecting rule that transfers the maximum number of ownerships from the public authority to the tenants. This rule is preferred to the current U.K. system by both the existing tenants and the public authority. Finally, a dynamic process for finding the outcome of the identified rule, in a finite number of steps, is provided.
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Speaker: Hannu Salonen, University of Turku, Finland
Title: Equilibria and centrality in link formation games.
Abstract: We study non–‐cooperative link formation games in which players have to decide how much to invest in relationships with other players. The relationship between equilibrium strategies and network centrality measures are investigated in games where there is a common valuation of players as friends. If the utility from relationships with other players is bilinear, then indegree, eigenvector centrality, and the Katz–‐Bonacich centrality measure put the players in opposite order than the common valuation. If the utility from relationships is strictly concave, then these measures order the players in the same way as the common valuation.
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Speaker: Holger Strulik, University of Goettingen, Germany
Title: Innovation Across the World: A Network Approach (joint with Ines Lindner)
Abstract: We present a multi-country theory of R&D-based economic growth. Countries are connected by a network of mutual knowledge exchange. Long-run growth is enerated via national and international standing-on-shoulders externalities: domestic productivity in R&D is increasing in the number of goods domestically available and the average number of goods available in the countries with which a country is connected. R&D allows to expand the range of available goods by adoption and innovation of new goods. The economic evolution of the world is characterized by an increasing share of countries performing R&D, increasing average income per capita, and first increasing and then declining income inequality across countries.
Speaker: Dries Vermeulen, Maastricht University
Title: Optimal finitely additive strategies in zero-sum games (joint with Janos Flesch and Anna Zseleva)
Abstract: We consider two-player zero-sum games with countably infinite action spaces and bounded payoff functions. The players’ strategies are finitely additive probability measures. Since a strategy profile does not always induce a unique expected payoff, we distinguish two extreme attitudes of players. A player is viewed as pessimistic if he always evaluates the range of possible expected payoffs by the worst one, and a player is viewed as optimistic if he always evaluates it by the best one. This approach results in a definition of a pessimistic and an optimistic value for each player. We provide an extensive analysis of the relation between these values, and connect them to the classical values. In addition, we also examine existence of optimal strategies with respect to these values.
