We analyze the problem of fully implementing a social choice set in ex post equilibrium. We identify an ex post monotonicity condition that is necessary and—in economic environments—sufficient for full implementation in ex post equilibrium. We also identify an ex post monotonicity no veto condition that is sufficient. Ex post monotonicity is satisfied in all single crossing environments with st...

We formulate a model of household behavior in which cooperation is costly and in which these costs vary across households. Some households rationally decide to behave noncooperatively, which in our context is an efficient outcome. An intriguing feature of the model is that, while the welfare of the spouses is continuous in the state variables, labor supply decisions are not. Small changes in st...

This study presents a modified version of the repeated discounted prisoners’ dilemma with long and short-run players. In our setting a short-run player does not observe the history that has occurred before he was born, and survives into next phases of the game with a probability given by the current action profile in the stage game. Thus, even though it is improbable, a short-run player may liv...

To better understand how support for redistributive policies is shaped by macroeconomic shocks, we explore how distributional preferences changed during the recent “Great Recession.” We conducted identical modified dictator games during both the recession and the preceding economic boom. The experiments capture subjects’ selfishness (the weight on one’s own payoff) and equality-efficiency trade...

We propose an incomplete information analogue of rationalizability. An action is said to be belief-free rationalizable if it survives the following iterated deletion process. At each stage, we delete actions for a type of a player that are not a best response to some conjecture that puts weight only on profiles of types of other players and states that that type thinks possible, combined with a...

While in previous models of pre-play communication players are forced to communicate, we investigate what happens if players can choose not to participate in this cheap talk. Outcomes are predicted by analyzing evolutionary stability in a population of a priori identical players. If the game following the communication rewards players who choose the same action then an e‰cient outcome is only g...

We consider the problem of dividing some amount of an infinitely divisible and homogeneous resource among agents having claims on this resource that cannot be jointly honored. A “rule” associates with each such problem a feasible division. Our goal is to uncover the structure of the space of rules. For that purpose, we study “operators” on the space, that is, mappings that associate to each rul...

Autogenic systems Inc. (ASI) sells an EMG unit that filters the EMG signal through a band-pass filter, full-wave rectifies it, then processes that signal with an envelope circuit. The time constant of this envelope circuit can be varied from 10, 20, 50, 100, 200, 500 to 1,000 seconds. These long time constants may be desirable for obtaining baseline values during biofeedback therapy, but they w...

We consider the problem of allocating some amount of an infinitely divisible and homogeneous resource among agents having claims on this resource that cannot be jointly honored. A “rule” associates with each such problem a feasible division. Our goal is to uncover the structure of the space of rules. For that purpose, we study “operators” on the space, that is, mappings that associate to each r...