Studies in Economic Theory – serie

One of the core building blocks of traditional economic theory is the concept of equilibrium, a state of the world in which economic forces are balanced and in the absence of external influences the values of economic variables remain static.  Many traditional equilibrium models, or equilibria, are established based on the rational behavior of individuals within financial markets, such as traders, market analysts, and investing firms, and their ability to maximize profits, no matter the cost.  Yet what happens when these market participants behave in an irrational manner, and how does this impact economic equilibria?  Contemporary economists have agreed that a process similar to Darwin’s Theory of Natural Selection takes over, whereby equilibria are shaped not by the behavior of individual participants but by an environment outside its control (i.e., an environment with little concern for maximizing profits).  It is an environment in which those “selected” produce positive financial gains, but have no regard for how it was obtained or underlying motivations—and those participants suffering losses disappear altogether.  Evolutionary Foundations of Equilibria in Irrational Markets proves traditional economic equilibria continue to occur despite natural selection in irrational markets.  It covers a wide sampling of equilibria under various scenarios, and each chapter addresses the results of these models at an aggregate level.  The text is supplemented with charts and figures to drive home key findings and proofs, making it of interest to students and researchers in the areas of economics and behavioral finance.

One of the core building blocks of traditional economic theory is the concept of equilibrium, a state of the world in which economic forces are balanced and in the absence of external influences the values of economic variables remain static.  Many traditional equilibrium models, or equilibria, are established based on the rational behavior of individuals within financial markets, such as traders, market analysts, and investing firms, and their ability to maximize profits, no matter the cost.  Yet what happens when these market participants behave in an irrational manner, and how does this impact economic equilibria?  Contemporary economists have agreed that a process similar to Darwin’s Theory of Natural Selection takes over, whereby equilibria are shaped not by the behavior of individual participants but by an environment outside its control (i.e., an environment with little concern for maximizing profits).  It is an environment in which those “selected” produce positive financial gains, but have no regard for how it was obtained or underlying motivations—and those participants suffering losses disappear altogether.  Evolutionary Foundations of Equilibria in Irrational Markets proves traditional economic equilibria continue to occur despite natural selection in irrational markets.  It covers a wide sampling of equilibria under various scenarios, and each chapter addresses the results of these models at an aggregate level.  The text is supplemented with charts and figures to drive home key findings and proofs, making it of interest to students and researchers in the areas of economics and behavioral finance.

This book, dedicated to Professor Giulio Codognato, presents a collection of essays exploring a range of issues in general equilibrium theory under perfect and imperfect competition, game theory, and social choice theory. It offers an up-to-date overview of advanced research in these fields and will appeal to scholars and students working on these topics, as well as to readers with an interest in the foundations of economic analysis.

This is the first book combining research on the Global Environment, Catastrophic Risks and Economic Theory and Policy. Modern economic theory originated in the middle of the twentieth century when industrial expansion coupled with population growth led to a voracious use of natural resources and global environmental concerns. It is uncontested that, for the first time in recorded history, humans dominate the planet, changing the planet's atmosphere, its bodies of water, and the complex web of species that makes life on earth. This radical change in circumstances led to rethinking of the foundations of human organization and, in particular, the industrial economy and the economic theory behind it. This book brings together new approaches on multiple levels: environmental sustainability requires rethinking in terms of economic theory and policy as well as the considerations of catastrophic risk and extremal events. Leading experts address questions of economic governance, risk management, policy decision making and distribution across time and space.

This book presents the state-of-the-art in non-linear dynamics and sunspots. These two topics have been the core of an international conference on instability and public policies in a globalized world, organized at Aix-Marseille School of Economics and GREQAM in honor of Jean-Michel Grandmont. He has made significant contributions on general equilibrium theory, monetary theory, learning, aggregation, non-linear dynamics and sunspots. This book assembles contributions by Jean-Michel Grandmont's colleagues, students and friends that have been influenced by his works and that are at the frontier of research in this domain today.

This is the first book combining research on the Global Environment, Catastrophic Risks and Economic Theory and Policy. Modern economic theory originated in the middle of the twentieth century when industrial expansion coupled with population growth led to a voracious use of natural resources and global environmental concerns. It is uncontested that, for the first time in recorded history, humans dominate the planet, changing the planet's atmosphere, its bodies of water, and the complex web of species that makes life on earth. This radical change in circumstances led to rethinking of the foundations of human organization and, in particular, the industrial economy and the economic theory behind it. This book brings together new approaches on multiple levels: environmental sustainability requires rethinking in terms of economic theory and policy as well as the considerations of catastrophic risk and extremal events. Leading experts address questions of economic governance, risk management, policy decision making and distribution across time and space.

This book presents the state-of-the-art in non-linear dynamics and sunspots. These two topics have been the core of an international conference on instability and public policies in a globalized world, organized at Aix-Marseille School of Economics and GREQAM in honor of Jean-Michel Grandmont. He has made significant contributions on general equilibrium theory, monetary theory, learning, aggregation, non-linear dynamics and sunspots. This book assembles contributions by Jean-Michel Grandmont's colleagues, students and friends that have been influenced by his works and that are at the frontier of research in this domain today.

In recent years, the usual optimisation techniques, which have proved so useful in microeconomic theory, have been extended to incorporate more powerful topological and differential methods, and these methods have led to new results on the qualitative behaviour of general economic and political systems. These developments have necessarily resulted in an increase in the degree of formalism in the publications in the academic journals. This formalism can often deter graduate students. The progression of ideas presented in this book will familiarize the student with the geometric concepts underlying these topological methods, and, as a result, make mathematical economics, general equilibrium theory, and social choice theory more accessible.

A collection of papers dealing with a broad range of topics in mathematical economics, game theory and economic dynamics. The contributions present both theoretical and applied research. The volume is dedicated to Mordecai Kurz. The papers were presented in a special symposium co-hosted by the Stanford University Department of Economics and by the Stanford Institute of Economic Policy Research in August 2002.

One of the main problems in current economic theory is to write contracts which are Pareto optimal, incentive compatible, and also implementable as a perfect Bayesian equilibrium of a dynamic, noncooperative game. The question arises whether it is possible to provide Walrasian type or cooperative equilibrium concepts which have these properties. This volume contains original contributions on noncooperative and cooperative equilibrium notions in economies with differential information and provides answers to the above questions. Moreover, issues of stability, learning and continuity of alternative equilibria are also examined.

In the area of dynamic economics, David Cass’s work has spawned a number of important lines of research, including the study of dynamic general equilibrium theory, the concept of sunspot equilibria, and general equilibrium theory when markets are incomplete. Based on these contributions, this volume contains new developments in the field, written by Cass's students and co-authors.

This book consists of five acts and two interludes, which are all written as dialogues between three main characters and other supporting characters. Each act discusses the epistemological, institutional and methodological foundations of game theory and economics, while using various stories and examples. A featured aspect of those discussions is that many forms of mutual misunderstanding are involved in social situations as well as in those fields themselves. One Japanese traditional comic story called the Konnyaku Mondo is representative and gives hints of how our thought is constrained by incorrect beliefs. Each dialogue critically examines extant theories and common misunderstanding in game theory and economics in order to find possible future developments of those fields.

In many industries the tariffs are not strictly proportional to the quantity purchased, i. e, they are nonlinear. Examples of nonlinear tariffs include railroad and electricity schedules and rental rates for durable goods and space. The major justification for the nonlinear pricing is the existence of private information on the side of consumers. In the early papers on the subject, private information was captured either by assuming a finite number of types (e. g. Adams and Yellen, 1976) or by a unidimensional continuum of types (Mussa and Rosen, 1978). Economics of the unidimen­ sional problems is by now well understood. The unidimensional models, however, do not cover all the situations of practical interest. Indeed, often the nonlinear tariffs specify the payment as a function of a variety of characteristics. For example, railroad tariffs spec­ ify charges based on weight, volume, and distance of each shipment. Dif­ ferent customers may value each of these characteristics differently, hence the customer's type will not in general be captured by a unidimensional characteristic and a problem of multidimensional screening arises. In such models the consumer's private information (her type) is captured by an m—dimensional vector, while the good produced by the monopolist has n quality dimensions.

Fighting crime breeds emotional responses which often lead to counter-productive government policy. To allow a rational analysis of these important concerns, this book employs the thinking of economics, political science, and game theory to develop new perspectives on crime and its causes. A basic assumption is that the criminal is a rational actor who makes decisions based on his or her personal expected gains and costs. By using this assumption, predictions about behaviour as well as emotional concerns such as prostitution and gun control are given a theoretical perspective. By understanding the strategic variables which cause, for example, gang wars and drug sales, we are better equipped to design effective public policy.In the new edition, a chapter on police corruption has been added. The Gangs chapter has been updated and focuses more on evaluating competing hypotheses about gang organization and activity.

This is an introduction to the foundations of economic property rights t- ory (EPRT). In this volume, a ?rst step in the EPRT research program, rules concerningeconomicpropertyrights(e. p. r. s),entrepreneurialagreements,and enterprises are discussed. Introduced concept of e. p. r. s is an extension of the traditional concept of pairing of residual rights of control and residual rights of returns in the economic theory. Its importance in economics is generated fromageneralimpossibilityofmakingacompletecontract,concerninge. p. r. s, for any nontrivial economic transaction. The volume o?ers a theoretical - tension of mathematical economics, applying recent results of Hopf algebras, quasi-Hopf algebras, representation theory, theory of categories, and defor- tion theories, in looking for suitable mathematical methodology of economic property rights theories and foundations of general theory of economic agr- ments. The idea is to construct a kind of mathematical application in which any fundamental formal entity and/or operation has an empirical economic interpretation. This approach is seen as a way to cope with an extreme c- plexity of economic phenomena under consideration and requests for precise formulationofmodelswheremeaningfulanswersandsolutionsofproblemsare only those which are obtained rigorously. The proposed extensions in ma- ematical economics and property rights theory are to provide rich enough foundations to follow complexity of economic property rights in the exact way, and to identify where there is an appropriate method providing a- quate solution, and also to ?nd problems where in general there is no such methodology.

nomic activity. The paper highlights how the interaction of domestic informational frictions, perfect capital mobility, and foreign interest rates can combine to provoke a sudden depreciation of the exchange rate and a prolonged decline in output. In particular,theauthorsdescribeconditionsunderwhichtwodifferentequilibriaexist. One has a high level of outputand a minorcostly-state-veri?cationproblem,and the other equilibrium has a higher level of output and a severe costly-state-veri?cation problem. In addition, the authors show how their model can successfully simulate a crisispaththatisqualitativelyconsistentwithoccurrencessuchastheMexican?n- cial crisis in 1994. An importantlesson emergingfromthis work is that even a small change in external factors can generate a "crisis" path, when this initial shock hits a small open monetary economy, if the economy features a combination of domestic informational frictions with international capital ?ows. The next paper, by Hernandez-Verme, also focuses on the study of small open economieswithinthe contextofan overlappinggenerationsmodel. Unlike Antinol? and Huybens, however, her main concern is the relative merits of different methods for achievingprice stability.To do so she mergesthe overlappinggenerationsmodel with a spatial model of Townsendto comparethe meritsof alternativeexchangerate regimes-namely, ?xed and ?exible. This analysis is carried out within a context where ?nancial intermediaries perform a real allocative function, there are multiple reserverequirements,andtheeconomyissubjecttocreditmarketfrictions. She?nds there is scope for endogenousvolatility, independent of the exchange rate regime in place. Another key ?nding is that under ?oating exchange rates, a positive trade-off between domestic in?ation and output can be exploited under credit rationing but only if in?ation is small. In fact, there exists an in?ation threshold beyond which domestic output suffers.

Competition and efficiency is at the core of economic theory. This volume collects papers of leading scholars, which extend the conventional general equilibrium model in important ways: Efficiency and price regulation are studied when markets are incomplete and existence of equilibria in such settings is proven under very general preference assumptions. The model is extended to include geographical location choice, a commodity space incorporating manufacturing imprecision and preferences for club-membership, schools and firms. Inefficiencies arising from household externalities or group membership are evaluated. Core equivalence is shown for bargaining economies. The theory of risk aversion is extended and the relation between risk taking and wealth is experimentally investigated. Other topics include determinacy in OLG with cash-in-advance constraints, income distribution and democracy in OLG, learning in OLG and in games, optimal pricing of derivative securities, the impact of heterogeneity at the individual level for aggregate consumption, and adaptive contracting in view of uncertainty.

This book contains a collection of original and state-of-the-art contributions in rational choice and general equilibrium theory. Among the topics are preferences, demand, equilibrium, core allocations, and testable restrictions. The contributing authors are Daniel McFadden, Rosa Matzkin, Emma Moreno-Garcia, Roger Lagunoff, Yakar Kannai, Myrna Wooders, James Moore, Ted Bergstrom, Luca Anderlini, Lin Zhou, Mark Bagnoli, Alexander Kovalenkov, Carlos Herves-Beloso, Michaela Topuzu, Bernard Cornet, Andreu Mas-Colell and Nicholas Yannelis.

The primary aim of this book is to present notions of convex analysis which constitute the basic underlying structure of argumentation in economic theory and which are common to optimization problems encountered in many applications. The intended readers are graduate students, and specialists of mathematical programming whose research fields are applied mathematics and economics. The text consists of a systematic development in eight chapters, with guided exercises containing sometimes significant and useful additional results. The book is appropriate as a class text, or for self-study.

The work on this book started many years ago as an attempt to simplify and unify some results usually taught in courses in mathematical economics. The economic interpretation of the re­ sults were representations of preferences as sums or integrals and the decomposition of preferences into utilities and probabilities. It later turned out that t.he approach taken in the earlier versions were also the proper approach in generalizing from preferences which were total preorders to preferences which were not total or tran­ sitive. The same mathematics would even in that situation give representations which were additive. It would also give decomposi­ tions where concepts of uncertainty appeared. Early versions of some of the results appeared as Working Pa­ pers No. 135, 140, 150, and 176 from The Center for Research in Management Science, Berkeley. A first version of chapters 2, 4, 6, 7, and 8 appeared 1969 with the title" Mean Groupoids" [177]. They are essentially unchanged -except for some notes especially in chapter 6. Another version appeared 1990 as [178]. Chapter 10 contains results from the same versions and from [181]. Chapter 11 by Birgit Grodal is based on [91] by Grodal and Jp,an-Francois Mertens. Chapters 11 and 12 - also by Birgit Gro­ dal -contains the results from the earlier versions, but have been extended (by Karl Vind) to take into account the new corollaries of the results in the other chapters.

Experimental methods are now a mainstream empirical methodology in economics. The papers in this volume represent some recent developments in research on experimental markets. The articles span a variety of topics related to experimental markets, including auctions, taxation, institutional differences, coordination in markets, and learning. Contributors to the volume include many of the most distinguished researchers in the area.

Apart from the underlying theme that all the contributions to this volume pertain to models set in an infinite dimensional space, they differ on many counts. Some were written in the early seventies while others are reports of ongoing research done especially with this volume in mind. Some are surveys of material that can, at least at this point in time, be deemed to have attained a satisfactory solution of the problem, while oth­ ers represent initial forays into an original and novel formulation. Some furnish alternative proofs of known, and by now, classical results, while others can be seen as groping towards and exploring formulations that have not yet reached a definitive form. The subject matter also has a wide leeway, ranging from solution concepts for economies to those for games and also including representation of preferences and discussion of purely mathematical problems, all within the rubric of choice variables belonging to an infinite dimensional space, interpreted as a commodity space or as a strategy space. Thus, this is a collective enterprise in a fairly wide sense of the term and one with the diversity of which we have interfered as little as possible. Our motivation for bringing all of this work under one set of covers was severalfold.

Over the last fifty years advanced mathematical tools have become an integral part in the development of modern economic theory. Economists continue to invoke sophisticated mathematical techniques and ideas in order to understand complex economic and social problems. In the last ten years the theory of Riesz spaces (vector lattices) has been successfully applied to economic theory. By now it is understood relatively well that the lattice structure of Riesz spaces can be employed to capture and interpret several economic notions. On April 16-20, 1990, a small conference on Riesz Spaces, Positive Opera­ tors, and their Applications to Economics took place at the California Institute of Technology. The purpose of the conference was to bring mathematicians special­ ized in Riesz Spaces and economists specialized in General Equilibrium together to exchange ideas and advance the interdisciplinary cooperation between math­ ematicians and economists. This volume is a collection of papers that represent the talks and discussions of the participants at the week-long conference. We take this opportunity to thank all the participants of the conference, especially those whose articles are contained in this volume. We also greatly ap­ preciate the financial support provided by the California Institute of Technology. In particular, we express our sincerest thanks to David Grether, John Ledyard, and David Wales for their support. Finally, we would like to thank Susan Davis, Victoria Mason, and Marge D'Elia who handled the delicate logistics for the smooth running of the confer­ ence.

The book presents a new theory of expectations called "rational beliefs". Contrary to the standard theory which views the origin of uncertainty as being exogenous to the economic system, the theory of rational beliefs holds that a crucial component of social risk and economic fluctuations is endogenously propagated by variations in the state of beliefs of market participants. One part of the book provides an exposition of the foundation of the theory of rational beliefs. A second part explores the structure of general equilibrium models in which market participants hold rational beliefs. The "Applications" part of the book studies the behavior of asset prices and rates of return on financial assets. It demonstrates that endogenous uncertainty provides a uniform paradigm for the study of economic fluctuations.

The twenty-nine papers selected for this volume cover topics in cooperative and noncooperative games, social choice and welfare, bargaining, matchings, auctions, mechanism design, general equilibrium, general equilibrium with finance, industrial organization, macroeconomics, and experimental economics. They reflect the diversity and depth of thought and method in economic theory and applications, as shown in the meetings of the Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET).

The two-volume work is intended to function as a textbook for graduate students in economics as well as a reference work for economic scholars. Assuming only the minimal mathematics background required of every second-year graduate student in economics, these two volumes provide a self-contained and careful development of mathematics through locally convex topological vector spaces, and fixed-point, separation, and selection theorems in such spaces. Volume One covers basic set theory, sequences and series, continuous and semi-continuous functions, an introduction to general linear spaces, basic convexity theory, and applications to economics. Volume Two introduces general topology, the theory of correspondences on and into topological spaces, Banach spaces, topological vector spaces, and maximum, fixed-point, and selection theorems for such spaces.

This is the second of a two-volume work intended to function as a textbook well as a reference work for economic for graduate students in economics, as scholars who are either working in theory, or who have a strong interest in economic theory. While it is not necessary that a student read the first volume before tackling this one, it may make things easier to have done so. In any case, the student undertaking a serious study of this volume should be familiar with the theories of continuity, convergence and convexity in Euclidean space, and have had a fairly sophisticated semester's work in Linear Algebra. While I have set forth my reasons for writing these volumes in the preface to Volume 1 of this work, it is perhaps in order to repeat that explanation here. I have undertaken this project for three principal reasons. In the first place, I have collected a number of results which are frequently useful in economics, but for which exact statements and proofs are rather difficult to find; for example, a number of results on convex sets and their separation by hyperplanes, some results on correspondences, and some results concerning support functions and their duals. Secondly, while the mathematical top­ ics taken up in these two volumes are generally taught somewhere in the mathematics curriculum, they are never (insofar as I am aware) done in a two-course sequence as they are arranged here.

The book begins with an introduction to some of the basic concepts and results on chaotic dynamical systems. Next it turns to a detailed self-contained summary of the literature on discounted dynamic optimization. The first two chapters are of particular pedagogical interest. The volume also brings together a number of outstanding advanced research papers on complex behavior of dynamic economic models. These make it clear that complexity cannot be dismissed as "exceptional" or "pathological" and, for explanation and prediction of economic variables, it is imperative to develop models with special structures suggested by empirical studies. Graduate students in economics will find the book valuable for an introduction to optimization and chaos. Specialists will find new directions to explore themes like robustness of chaotic behavior and the role of discounting in generating cycles and complexity.

In real life, as well as in economic models, individuals often make decisions in an uncertain environment. In many cases, a problem which an optimizing agent faces can be formulated or reformulated as a problem of optimal timing of a certain irreversible or partially reversible action or optimal stopping problem. In this book, the authors present an alternative approach to optimal stopping problems. The basic ideas and techniques of the approach can be explained much simpler than the standard methods in the literature on optimal stopping problems. The monograph will teach the reader to apply the technique to many problems in economics and finance, including new ones. From the technical point of view, the method can be characterized as option pricing via the Wiener-Hopf factorization.