Pub Date : 2026-02-01Epub Date: 2025-12-13DOI: 10.1016/j.geb.2025.12.003
Hyunjun Cho , Jin Yeub Kim , Jaeok Park
We examine the attainability of marginal contributions in two models of one-sided matching and assignment. For the one-sided matching problem, where agents in a single group are matched with each other, the core may be empty, and even when nonempty, some agents may fail to attain their marginal contributions in the core. By allowing fractional matchings, however, we guarantee the non-emptiness of the core and show that every agent’s marginal contribution is attainable in the core. This implies that all the agents can receive their marginal contributions at the same time if and only if the core is a singleton. For the one-sided assignment problem, where agents are matched to objects they own, we obtain analogous results even without introducing fractional assignments. Finally, extending to linear production games, which encompass both models, we show that the attainability property may fail but is guaranteed under sufficiently many replications.
{"title":"Marginal contribution and singleton cores in one-sided matching and assignment","authors":"Hyunjun Cho , Jin Yeub Kim , Jaeok Park","doi":"10.1016/j.geb.2025.12.003","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.geb.2025.12.003","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>We examine the attainability of marginal contributions in two models of one-sided matching and assignment. For the one-sided matching problem, where agents in a single group are matched with each other, the core may be empty, and even when nonempty, some agents may fail to attain their marginal contributions in the core. By allowing fractional matchings, however, we guarantee the non-emptiness of the core and show that every agent’s marginal contribution is attainable in the core. This implies that all the agents can receive their marginal contributions at the same time if and only if the core is a singleton. For the one-sided assignment problem, where agents are matched to objects they own, we obtain analogous results even without introducing fractional assignments. Finally, extending to linear production games, which encompass both models, we show that the attainability property may fail but is guaranteed under sufficiently many replications.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48291,"journal":{"name":"Games and Economic Behavior","volume":"156 ","pages":"Pages 82-97"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2026-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145840756","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2026-02-01Epub Date: 2025-12-15DOI: 10.1016/j.geb.2025.12.002
Ashwin Kambhampati
Equilibrium predictions in games of incomplete information are sensitive to the assumed information structure. Monderer and Samet (1996) and Kajii and Morris (1998) define topological notions of proximity for common prior information structures such that two information structures are close if and only if (approximate) equilibrium payoffs are close. However, Monderer and Samet (1996) fix a common prior and define their topology on profiles of partitions over a state space, whereas Kajii and Morris (1998) define their topology on common priors over the product of a state space and a type space. We prove the open conjecture that two partition profiles are close in the Monderer and Samet (1996) topology if and only if there exists a labeling of types such that the associated common priors are close in the Kajii and Morris (1998) topology.
{"title":"Payoff continuity in games of incomplete information across models of knowledge","authors":"Ashwin Kambhampati","doi":"10.1016/j.geb.2025.12.002","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.geb.2025.12.002","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Equilibrium predictions in games of incomplete information are sensitive to the assumed information structure. Monderer and Samet (1996) and Kajii and Morris (1998) define topological notions of proximity for common prior information structures such that two information structures are close if and only if (approximate) equilibrium payoffs are close. However, <span><span>Monderer and Samet (1996)</span></span> fix a common prior and define their topology on profiles of partitions over a state space, whereas <span><span>Kajii and Morris (1998)</span></span> define their topology on common priors over the product of a state space and a type space. We prove the open conjecture that two partition profiles are close in the <span><span>Monderer and Samet (1996)</span></span> topology if and only if there exists a labeling of types such that the associated common priors are close in the <span><span>Kajii and Morris (1998)</span></span> topology.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48291,"journal":{"name":"Games and Economic Behavior","volume":"156 ","pages":"Pages 98-108"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2026-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145840757","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2026-02-01Epub Date: 2025-12-16DOI: 10.1016/j.geb.2025.11.007
Stéphane Le Roux , Valentin Goranko
This paper proposes and studies a mechanism modelling the emergence of cooperation in non-cooperative multi-player extensive form games. We consider such games enriched with additional “stage bidding actions”, where at each decision node of the game tree, before the player controlling that node makes a decision every other player may make a committed offer (‘bid’) to pay an explicitly proposed amount of utility to the controlling player if she makes the choice explicitly indicated in the bid. In this work we assume that the bids are made simultaneously by all players. The controlling player then considers all these bids and then decides on its move. The effect of each bid associated with that choice is that it modifies the payoffs in the respective subgame according to the bid by transferring the proposed amounts of utility from the bidder to the controlling player who made the choice; all other bids made at that stage become irrelevant. Thus, these stage bids serve as an incentives-based mechanism that enables reaching a mutually beneficial cooperation in extensive form games.
We study the resulting multi-player extensive form games with incentive bidding, which we call incentive bidding games (IB games), and analyze the subgame perfect equilibria (SPE) in these games. We show constructively that all IB games have (possibly many) SPE, and that the SPE outcomes (i.e. payoff tuples) form a polytope in the space of all outcomes. In the case of 2-player games, we also prove for an arbitrary game tree that all the SPE are sum-maximizing and have the same outcome, thereby defining a unique “value” of the game. These results contrast some well-known drawbacks of SPE in standard extensive form games and provide a further strong motivation for studying extensive form games with incentive bidding.
We also study the notion of strong SPE in the sense of Aumann for IB games. First, we show that each of these strong SPE maximizes the sum of the payoffs (thus achieving a socially optimal solution). Second, if the game tree is binary, the strong SPE outcomes form a convex polytope. Third, games with only two leaves have such strong SPE, and we conjecture that all games with binary decision trees and with the same controlling player at all decision nodes have, indeed, such strong SPE.
{"title":"Extensive form games with incentive stage-bidding: An emergence of non-cooperative cooperation","authors":"Stéphane Le Roux , Valentin Goranko","doi":"10.1016/j.geb.2025.11.007","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.geb.2025.11.007","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This paper proposes and studies a mechanism modelling the emergence of cooperation in non-cooperative multi-player extensive form games. We consider such games enriched with additional “stage bidding actions”, where at each decision node of the game tree, before the player controlling that node makes a decision every other player may make a committed offer (‘bid’) to pay an explicitly proposed amount of utility to the controlling player if she makes the choice explicitly indicated in the bid. In this work we assume that the bids are made simultaneously by all players. The controlling player then considers all these bids and then decides on its move. The effect of each bid associated with that choice is that it modifies the payoffs in the respective subgame according to the bid by transferring the proposed amounts of utility from the bidder to the controlling player who made the choice; all other bids made at that stage become irrelevant. Thus, these stage bids serve as an incentives-based mechanism that enables reaching a mutually beneficial cooperation in extensive form games.</div><div>We study the resulting multi-player extensive form games with incentive bidding, which we call <em>incentive bidding games</em> (IB games), and analyze the subgame perfect equilibria (SPE) in these games. We show constructively that all IB games have (possibly many) SPE, and that the SPE outcomes (i.e. payoff tuples) form a polytope in the space of all outcomes. In the case of 2-player games, we also prove for an arbitrary game tree that all the SPE are sum-maximizing and have the same outcome, thereby defining a unique “value” of the game. These results contrast some well-known drawbacks of SPE in standard extensive form games and provide a further strong motivation for studying extensive form games with incentive bidding.</div><div>We also study the notion of strong SPE in the sense of Aumann for IB games. First, we show that each of these strong SPE maximizes the sum of the payoffs (thus achieving a socially optimal solution). Second, if the game tree is binary, the strong SPE outcomes form a convex polytope. Third, games with only two leaves have such strong SPE, and we conjecture that all games with binary decision trees and with the same controlling player at all decision nodes have, indeed, such strong SPE.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48291,"journal":{"name":"Games and Economic Behavior","volume":"156 ","pages":"Pages 109-134"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2026-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145840758","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2026-01-01Epub Date: 2025-11-07DOI: 10.1016/j.geb.2025.11.001
Eric Bahel , Christian Trudeau , Haoyu Wang
We introduce the notion of preconvexity, which extends the familiar concept of convexity found in cooperative games with transferable utility. In a convex game, the larger the group joined by an agent, the larger the marginal value brought to the group by that agent. By contrast, in strictly preconvex games, an agent’s marginal contribution is initially decreasing (when joining small groups), and it eventually becomes increasing at (and above) some critical group size. As a consequence, the core of a preconvex game may be empty. Defining the property of semicohesiveness (related to marginal contributions at this critical group size), we prove that it is sufficient to guarantee a nonempty core. We also propose a new solution for the set of preconvex games; and we characterize this solution by combining three axioms which are natural in our framework. A stronger cohesiveness property (guaranteeing that our solution falls in the core) is also studied. Some additional results are provided for the special case of anticonvex games, for which marginal contributions are always non-increasing.
{"title":"Preconvex games","authors":"Eric Bahel , Christian Trudeau , Haoyu Wang","doi":"10.1016/j.geb.2025.11.001","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.geb.2025.11.001","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>We introduce the notion of preconvexity, which extends the familiar concept of convexity found in cooperative games with transferable utility. In a convex game, the larger the group joined by an agent, the larger the marginal value brought to the group by that agent. By contrast, in strictly preconvex games, an agent’s marginal contribution is initially decreasing (when joining small groups), and it eventually becomes increasing at (and above) some critical group size. As a consequence, the core of a preconvex game may be empty. Defining the property of semicohesiveness (related to marginal contributions at this critical group size), we prove that it is sufficient to guarantee a nonempty core. We also propose a new solution for the set of preconvex games; and we characterize this solution by combining three axioms which are natural in our framework. A stronger cohesiveness property (guaranteeing that our solution falls in the core) is also studied. Some additional results are provided for the special case of anticonvex games, for which marginal contributions are always non-increasing.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48291,"journal":{"name":"Games and Economic Behavior","volume":"155 ","pages":"Pages 250-266"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2026-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145579259","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2026-01-01Epub Date: 2025-10-25DOI: 10.1016/j.geb.2025.10.005
Shuchen Zhao
Using a series of laboratory experiments, this paper examines whether preferences for positively skewed assets, commonly observed in individual decision-making, persist in market settings where assets with both positive and negative skewness coexist. Results from a traditional BDM [Becker et al., 1964] task confirm a strong preference for positively skewed assets. However, this preference does not carry over to continuous double auction (CDA) markets with balanced endowments: market prices equalize, consistent with predictions from the capital asset pricing model (CAPM). More surprisingly, in CDA markets with unbalanced initial endowments, a price inversion arises in which the negatively skewed asset becomes more expensive. Robustness checks across trading formats, group sizes, and asset scopes confirm these patterns. The findings underscore how institutional features and initial endowments moderate the translation of behavioral preferences into market prices, challenging the external validity of individual-level skewness preferences in financial markets.
通过一系列实验室实验，本文检验了在个人决策中普遍观察到的对正偏性资产的偏好，是否在正偏性和负偏性并存的资产市场环境中持续存在。传统BDM [Becker et al.， 1964]任务的结果证实了对正向倾斜资产的强烈偏好。然而，这种偏好不会延续到具有平衡禀赋的连续双拍卖（CDA）市场：市场价格均衡，与资本资产定价模型（CAPM）的预测一致。更令人惊讶的是，在初始禀赋不平衡的CDA市场中，出现了价格反转，负倾斜的资产变得更加昂贵。跨交易格式、集团规模和资产范围的稳健性检查证实了这些模式。研究结果强调了制度特征和初始禀赋如何调节行为偏好向市场价格的转化，挑战了金融市场中个人水平偏度偏好的外部有效性。
{"title":"Pricing skewed assets in multi-asset experimental markets","authors":"Shuchen Zhao","doi":"10.1016/j.geb.2025.10.005","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.geb.2025.10.005","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Using a series of laboratory experiments, this paper examines whether preferences for positively skewed assets, commonly observed in individual decision-making, persist in market settings where assets with both positive and negative skewness coexist. Results from a traditional BDM [Becker et al., 1964] task confirm a strong preference for positively skewed assets. However, this preference does not carry over to continuous double auction (CDA) markets with balanced endowments: market prices equalize, consistent with predictions from the capital asset pricing model (CAPM). More surprisingly, in CDA markets with unbalanced initial endowments, a price inversion arises in which the negatively skewed asset becomes more expensive. Robustness checks across trading formats, group sizes, and asset scopes confirm these patterns. The findings underscore how institutional features and initial endowments moderate the translation of behavioral preferences into market prices, challenging the external validity of individual-level skewness preferences in financial markets.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48291,"journal":{"name":"Games and Economic Behavior","volume":"155 ","pages":"Pages 107-148"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2026-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145467139","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2026-01-01Epub Date: 2025-10-29DOI: 10.1016/j.geb.2025.10.007
Leonie Baumann
A principal must allocate a prize without monetary transfers. She wants to give it to the highest value agent. Agents know their own and their neighbors’ values, as determined by a network. Competing for the prize, agents send messages about themselves (applications) and their neighbors (references). They face a limit to lying, so information is partially verifiable. No incentive-compatible mechanism achieves robust implementation. Assigning the prize as a function of best applications and worst references achieves dominant strategy implementation for all networks and full implementation for the complete network and a class of networks if agents are partially honest.
{"title":"Robust implementation with peer mechanisms and evidence","authors":"Leonie Baumann","doi":"10.1016/j.geb.2025.10.007","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.geb.2025.10.007","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>A principal must allocate a prize without monetary transfers. She wants to give it to the highest value agent. Agents know their own and their neighbors’ values, as determined by a network. Competing for the prize, agents send messages about themselves (applications) and their neighbors (references). They face a limit to lying, so information is partially verifiable. No incentive-compatible mechanism achieves robust implementation. Assigning the prize as a function of best applications and worst references achieves dominant strategy implementation for all networks and full implementation for the complete network and a class of networks if agents are partially honest.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48291,"journal":{"name":"Games and Economic Behavior","volume":"155 ","pages":"Pages 192-211"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2026-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145526271","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2026-01-01Epub Date: 2025-11-12DOI: 10.1016/j.geb.2025.11.002
Inés Macho-Stadler, David Pérez-Castrillo, David Wettstein
Theorem 1 in Macho-Stadler et al. (2018) is incorrect. In this note, we correct the theorem by introducing a new axiom, the non-negative payoffs axiom, and adjusting the proof accordingly. We also discuss the implications of this correction for other results presented in the paper.
Macho-Stadler et al.（2018）中的定理1是不正确的。在这篇笔记中，我们通过引入一个新的公理——非负收益公理来修正定理，并相应地调整证明。我们还讨论了这一修正对论文中提出的其他结果的影响。
{"title":"Corrigendum to “Values for environments with externalities – the average approach” [Games Econ. Behav. 108 (2018) 49–64.]","authors":"Inés Macho-Stadler, David Pérez-Castrillo, David Wettstein","doi":"10.1016/j.geb.2025.11.002","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.geb.2025.11.002","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Theorem 1 in Macho-Stadler et al. (2018) is incorrect. In this note, we correct the theorem by introducing a new axiom, the non-negative payoffs axiom, and adjusting the proof accordingly. We also discuss the implications of this correction for other results presented in the paper.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48291,"journal":{"name":"Games and Economic Behavior","volume":"155 ","pages":"Pages 267-269"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2026-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145579328","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2026-01-01Epub Date: 2025-10-01DOI: 10.1016/j.geb.2025.09.007
Mikel Álvarez-Mozos , Inés Macho-Stadler , David Pérez-Castrillo
We introduce the family of games with intertemporal externalities, where two disjoint sets of players play sequentially. Coalitions formed by the present players create worth today, but the way these players organize also affects the future: their partition imposes externalities that influence the worth of coalitions formed by future players. We adapt the classic Shapley axioms and explore their implications. They are not sufficient to uniquely determine a value. We propose two solution concepts based on interpreting the Shapley value as the players' expected contributions to coalitions: the one-coalition externality value and the naive value. Our main results show that adding a single axiom to the classical Shapley axioms yields a unique value: the one-coalition externality value arises adding a principle of equal treatment of direct and indirect contributions or an axiom on necessary players, while the naive value is characterized adding equal treatment of externalities.
{"title":"Sequential creation of surplus and the Shapley value","authors":"Mikel Álvarez-Mozos , Inés Macho-Stadler , David Pérez-Castrillo","doi":"10.1016/j.geb.2025.09.007","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.geb.2025.09.007","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>We introduce the family of <em>games with intertemporal externalities</em>, where two disjoint sets of players play sequentially. Coalitions formed by the present players create worth today, but the way these players organize also affects the future: their partition imposes externalities that influence the worth of coalitions formed by future players. We adapt the classic Shapley axioms and explore their implications. They are not sufficient to uniquely determine a value. We propose two solution concepts based on interpreting the Shapley value as the players' expected contributions to coalitions: the <em>one-coalition externality value</em> and the <em>naive value</em>. Our main results show that adding a single axiom to the classical Shapley axioms yields a unique value: the one-coalition externality value arises adding a principle of equal treatment of direct and indirect contributions or an axiom on necessary players, while the naive value is characterized adding equal treatment of externalities.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48291,"journal":{"name":"Games and Economic Behavior","volume":"155 ","pages":"Pages 149-166"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2026-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145467138","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2026-01-01Epub Date: 2025-11-02DOI: 10.1016/j.geb.2025.10.009
Xueheng Li
Sociologists and psychologists have long argued that emotions are essential to sustaining social norms. This study examines the role of indignation in upholding cooperation norms within society. I model indignation in a population psychological game and characterize the stochastically stable equilibrium in a noisy best-reply dynamic. The analysis yields two findings. First, indignation can sustain cooperation in the long run, irrespective of whether interactions are global or occur within a fixed local interaction structure. Second, mobility allows individuals to sort into cooperative communities, causing these communities to grow in size and persist under a wider range of conditions. Therefore, mobility fosters stable norms of cooperation and punishment in large human societies. This study is the first to apply stochastic stability to address multiple equilibria in psychological games.
{"title":"Indignation and the evolution of cooperation norms","authors":"Xueheng Li","doi":"10.1016/j.geb.2025.10.009","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.geb.2025.10.009","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Sociologists and psychologists have long argued that emotions are essential to sustaining social norms. This study examines the role of indignation in upholding cooperation norms within society. I model indignation in a population psychological game and characterize the stochastically stable equilibrium in a noisy best-reply dynamic. The analysis yields two findings. First, indignation can sustain cooperation in the long run, irrespective of whether interactions are global or occur within a fixed local interaction structure. Second, mobility allows individuals to sort into cooperative communities, causing these communities to grow in size and persist under a wider range of conditions. Therefore, mobility fosters stable norms of cooperation and punishment in large human societies. This study is the first to apply stochastic stability to address multiple equilibria in psychological games.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48291,"journal":{"name":"Games and Economic Behavior","volume":"155 ","pages":"Pages 228-249"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2026-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145526268","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2026-01-01Epub Date: 2025-10-13DOI: 10.1016/j.geb.2025.10.002
Rene Saran
We present a novel and tractable method that is widely applicable to general delegation problems. Every delegation set is equivalent to an incentive feasible mechanism. We characterize mechanisms with at most finitely many points of discontinuity and prove that the corresponding constrained problem is equivalent to a discrete-time, finite-horizon, dynamic optimization problem. This transformation makes the problem tractable: The dynamic problem is essentially a shortest-path problem that is amenable to different solution methods. By analyzing the dynamic problem, we show that restricting to mechanisms with at most finitely many points of discontinuity broadly entails no loss to the principal and identify a novel sufficient condition for such mechanisms to be optimal. We also provide a numerical method to find an approximately optimal mechanism. Lastly, we illustrate the results in a new delegation model of volunteer contracts.
{"title":"A dynamic optimization approach to delegation with an application to volunteer contracts","authors":"Rene Saran","doi":"10.1016/j.geb.2025.10.002","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.geb.2025.10.002","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>We present a novel and tractable method that is widely applicable to general delegation problems. Every delegation set is equivalent to an incentive feasible mechanism. We characterize mechanisms with at most finitely many points of discontinuity and prove that the corresponding constrained problem is equivalent to a discrete-time, finite-horizon, dynamic optimization problem. This transformation makes the problem tractable: The dynamic problem is essentially a shortest-path problem that is amenable to different solution methods. By analyzing the dynamic problem, we show that restricting to mechanisms with at most finitely many points of discontinuity broadly entails no loss to the principal and identify a novel sufficient condition for such mechanisms to be optimal. We also provide a numerical method to find an approximately optimal mechanism. Lastly, we illustrate the results in a new delegation model of volunteer contracts.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48291,"journal":{"name":"Games and Economic Behavior","volume":"155 ","pages":"Pages 27-54"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2026-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145323181","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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