Suchergebnisse

We study how competition in nonlinear pricing between two principals (sellers) affects market participation by a privately informed agent (consumer). When participation is restricted to all or nothing ("intrinsic" agency), the agent must choose between both principals' contracts and selecting her outside option. When the agent is afforded the additional possibilities of choosing only one contract ("delegated" agency), competition is more intense. The two games have distinct predictions for participation. Intrinsic agency always induces more distortion in participation relative to the monopoly outcome, and equilibrium allocations are discontinuous for the marginal consumer. Under delegated agency, relative to monopoly, market participation increases (respectively, decreases) when contracting variables are substitutes (respectively, complements) on the intensive margin. Equilibrium allocations are continuous for the marginal consumer and the range of product offerings is identical to both the first‐best and the monopoly outcome.

The decisions made by one government a¤ect the tax revenue that can be collected by the decisionmakers belonging to the same tier of government or by stacked jurisdictions : externalities arise, the existence and the magnitude of which are closely related to the nature of the tax, to the mobility of the base and to the distribution of tax competence among decisionmakers. Indeed, when same authorities belonging to a same level of government derive their receipts from a mobile tax base, a competition mechanism takes place among them that triggers externalities. Likewise, when di¤erent layers of decision-makers exert their taxing power upon a common base, the choices made by one tier a¤ect the receipts that the other governments can collect. As a by-product, this paper proposes a model where both horizontal and vertical interactions are tackled, first successively then simultaneously. Uncertainty concerning the base, that is, the amount of capital likely to be invested, is introduced and a generalization of taxation schemes is provided. The analysis shows that horizontal and vertical externalities point towards opposite directions : while horizontal competition leads to inefficiently low rates, the common pool problem arising from the stacking of decisionmakers taxing a same base gives rise to a phenomenon of over-taxation. Besides, the combination of both externalities yields to an intermediary tax rate : the outcome is brought closer to the social optimum.

The decisions made by one government a¤ect the tax revenue that can be collected by the decisionmakers belonging to the same tier of government or by stacked jurisdictions : externalities arise, the existence and the magnitude of which are closely related to the nature of the tax, to the mobility of the base and to the distribution of tax competence among decisionmakers. Indeed, when same authorities belonging to a same level of government derive their receipts from a mobile tax base, a competition mechanism takes place among them that triggers externalities. Likewise, when di¤erent layers of decision-makers exert their taxing power upon a common base, the choices made by one tier a¤ect the receipts that the other governments can collect. As a by-product, this paper proposes a model where both horizontal and vertical interactions are tackled, first successively then simultaneously. Uncertainty concerning the base, that is, the amount of capital likely to be invested, is introduced and a generalization of taxation schemes is provided. The analysis shows that horizontal and vertical externalities point towards opposite directions : while horizontal competition leads to inefficiently low rates, the common pool problem arising from the stacking of decisionmakers taxing a same base gives rise to a phenomenon of over-taxation. Besides, the combination of both externalities yields to an intermediary tax rate : the outcome is brought closer to the social optimum.

This volume presents a new theory of games which insists on games' unique value in human life. C. Thi Nguyen argues that games are an integral part of how we become mature, free people. Bridging aesthetics and practical reasoning, he gives an account of the special motivational structure involved in playing games. We can pursue goals, not for their own value, but for the sake of the struggle. Playing games involves a motivational inversion from normal life, and the fact that we can engage in this motivational inversion lets us use games to experience forms of agency we might never have developed on our own. Games, then, are a special medium for communication.

AbstractBusiness activities often involve a common agent managing a variety of projects on behalf of investors with potentially conflicting interests. The extent of the agent's actions is also often unknown to investors, who have to design contracts that provide incentives to the manager despite this lack of crucial knowledge. We consider a game between several principals and a common agent, where principals know only a subset of the actions available to the agent. Principals demand robustness and evaluate contracts on a worst‐case basis. This robust approach allows for a crisp characterization of the equilibrium contracts and payoffs and provides a novel proof of equilibrium existence in common agency by constructing a pseudo‐potential for the game. Robust contracts make explicit how the efficiency of the equilibrium outcome relative to collusion among principals depends on the principals' ability to extract payments from the agent.

We analyze how the standard results in lobbying theory change when one side has a second instrument at its disposal. We look at the effect concessions by one side have on the outcome in a Nash & a Stackelberg game. 4 References. Adapted from the source document.