We introduce a new measure of the discrepancy in strategic games between the social welfare in a Nash equilibrium and in a social optimum, that we call selfishness level. It is the smallest fraction of the social welfare that needs to be offered to each player to achieve that a social optimum is realized in a pure Nash equilibrium. The selfishness level is unrelated to the price of stability an...

Optimal climate policy is studied in a Ramsey growth model with exhaustible oil reserves, an infinitely elastic supply of renewables, stock-dependent oil extraction costs and convex climate damages. We concentrate on economies with an initial capital stock below that of the steady state of the carbon-free economy and the initial cost of oil (extraction cost plus scarcity rent and social cost of...

We introduce a new measure of the discrepancy in strategic games between the social welfare in a Nash equilibrium and in a social optimum, that we call selfishness level. It is the smallest fraction of the social welfare that needs to be offered to each player to achieve that a social optimum is realized in a pure Nash equilibrium. The selfishness level is unrelated to the price of stability an...

In recent years, growth in the demand for emergency medical services along with decline in the number of hospitals with emergency departments (EDs) has led to overcrowding. In periods of overcrowding, an ED can request the Emergency Medical Services (EMS) agency to divert incoming ambulances to neighboring hospitals, a phenomenon known as “ambulance diversion”. The EMS agency will accept this r...

Following the 2011 wave of political unrest, extending from the Arab Spring to the UK riots, the formation of a large consensus around Internet censorship is underway. The present paper adopts a social simulation approach to show that the decision to “regulate”, filter or censor social media in situations of unrest changes the pattern of civil protest and ultimately results in higher levels of ...

This paper discusses the effectiveness of different media from a social psychology perspective, and the implications on interactions in social groups and in organizations. In particular, we are interested in the social richness of the media—how effectively they convey the personalities and intentions of their users. We studied CMC (email and chat) and voice telephony, and compared them with fac...

An instance of the max k−cut game is an edge weighted graph. Every vertex is controlled by an autonomous agent with strategy space [1..k]. Given a player i, his payoff is defined as the total weight of the edges [i, j] such that player j’s strategy is different from player i’s strategy. The social welfare is defined as the weight of the cut, i.e. half the sum of the players payoff. It is known ...

We consider equilibrium and optimum use of a Vickrey road bottleneck, distinguishing between long-run and short-run scheduling preferences in an otherwise stylized scheduling model. The preference structure reflects that there is a distinction between the (exogenous) ’long-run preferred arrival time’, which would be relevant if consumers were unconstrained in the scheduling of their activities,...

This paper uses a social psychological perspective to study the effectiveness of different media of communication and how they influence interactions in social groups and organizations. In particular, we are interested in the social richness of the media— how effectively they convey the personalities and intentions of their users. We studied CMC (email and chat) and voice telephony, and compare...