102 research outputs found
Competition of E-Commerce Intermediaries
No full textIn e-commerce, where information collection is essentially costless and geographic location of traders matters very little, fierce competition between providers of similar services is expected. We consider a model where two e-commerce intermediaries (internet shops) compete for sellers. We show that two non-identical shops may coexist in equilibrium if the population of sellers is sufficiently differentiated in their time preferences. In such an equilibrium less patient sellers choose the more popular (with a higher rate of arrival of new buyers) and more expensive shop, while more patient sellers prefer the less popular and cheaper one.E-commerce, Intermediary, Competition, Listing fee, Closing fee
Sad-Loser contests
No full textWe consider asymmetric winner-reimbursed contests. It turns out that such contests (Sad-Loser) have multiple internal pure-strategy equilibria (where at least two players are active). We describe all equilibria and discuss their properties. In particular, we find (1) that an active player is indifferent among all her non-negative choices and her expected payoff is zero in any internal equilibrium, (2) that a higher-value (stronger) player always spends less than a lower-value (weaker) player and therefore always has a lower chance to win a Sad-Loser contest in any internal equilibrium, and (3) a sufficient condition for a net total spending to be higher in a Sad-Loser contest than in the corresponding asymmetric contest
Optimal Mechanisms for an Auction Mediator
No full textWe consider a dynamic auction environment with a long-lived seller and short-lived buyers mediated by a third party. A mediator has incomplete information about traders' values and selects an auction mechanism to maximize her expected revenue. We characterize mediator-optimal mechanisms and show that an optimal mechanism has a simple implementation as a Vickrey auction with a reserve price where the seller pays to the mediator only a fixed percentage from the closing price.Optimal mechanism, Vickrey auction, Mediator
Sad-Loser Lottery
No full textWe consider lotteries with reimbursements. It turns out that without loss of generality it is enough analyze lotteries where the winner gets her expenses reimbursed. We find that such a lottery (Sad-Loser) has multiple pure-strategy equilibria. We describe all equilibria and discuss their properties. In particular, we find (1) a sufficient condition for the net total spending to be higher in the Sad-Loser lottery than in the standard lottery, (2) that the Exclusion Principle holds.
Altruistic Versus Rational Behavior in a Public Good Game
No full textThis paper analyses an evolutionary version of the Public Good game of Eshel, Samuelson, and Shaked (1998) in which agents can choose between imitation and best-reply decision rules. We describe conditions under which altruistic and spiteful (maximizing) behavior arise: these conditions are established for any number of neighbors and any total number of agents in the population. Given mistake-free play, (short-run) outcomes are identical whether agents are constrained to employ an imitation rule only; or they can choose between imitation and best-reply rules. Given the possibility of mistakes, (long-run) outcomes vary across these two scenarios. The paper suggests how to provide public goods and gives an explanation of why we observe seemingly irrational cooperation - altruistic behavior - in the rational world.
Altruistic Versus Egoistic Behavior in a Public Good Game
No full textThis paper analyzes an evolutionary version of the Public Good game in which boundedly rational agents can use imitation and best-reply decision rules. Several possibilities for both decision rules to be present in the population are considered. I show that altruistic behavior might survive if switching between the decision rules occurs less often than the probabilities of errors in choosing a strategy and if local neighborhoods are not too small or too large
Location, Information and Coordination
No full textIn this paper, we consider K finite populations of boundedly rational agents whose preferences and information differ. Each period agents are randomly paired to play some coordination games. We show that several ``special`` (fixed) agents lead the coordination. In a mistake-free environment, all connected fixed agents have to coordinate on the same strategy. In the long run, as the probability of mistakes goes to zero, all agents coordinate on the same strategy. The long-run outcome is unique, if all fixed agents belong to the same population.
Optimal mechanisms for an auction mediator
No full textWe consider a multi-period auction with a seller who has a single object for sale, a large population of potential buyers, and a mediator of the trade. The seller and every buyer have independent private values of the object. The mediator designs an auction mechanism which maximizes her revenue subject to certain constraints for the traders. In each period the seller auctions the object to a set of buyers drawn at random from the population. The seller can re-auction the object (infinitely many times) if it is not sold in previous interactions. We characterize the class of mediator-optimal auction mechanisms. One of such mechanisms is a Vickrey auction with a reserve price where the seller pays to the mediator a fixed percentage from the closing price
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