Browsing by Subject "C72"
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Item The Expected Number of Nash Equilibria of a Normal Form Game(Center for Economic Research, Department of Economics, University of Minnesota, 2002-05) McLennan, AndrewItem The Expected Number of Nash Equilibria of a Normal Form Game(Center for Economic Research, Department of Economics, University of Minnesota, 1999-03) McLennan, AndrewItem Generic 4 x 4 Two Person Games Have At Most 15 Nash Equilibria(Center for Economic Research, Department of Economics, University of Minnesota, 1997-04) McLennan, Andrew; Park, In-UckThe maximal generic number of Nash equilibria for two person games in which the two agents each have four pure strategies is shown to be 15. In contrast to Keiding (1995), who arrives at this result by computer enumeration, our argument is based on a collection of lemmas that constrain the set of equilibria. Several of these pertain to any common number d of pure strategies for the two agents.Item Generic Finiteness of Equilibrium Outcome Distributions for Sender-Receiver Cheap-Talk Games(Center for Economic Research, Department of Economics, University of Minnesota, 1993-09) Park, In-UckThis paper establishes the generic finiteness of equilibrium outcome distributions for Sender-Receiver cheap-talk games. An equilibrium in a Sender-Receiver cheap-talk game is said to be in reduced form if every message is used by at least one type and no two messages provoke the same response. It is shown that, for a generic set of utilities on outcomes, a Sender-Receiver cheap-talk game has a finite number of reduced form equilibria. A corollary is that, for generic utilities, the set of probability distributions over outcomes generated by equilibria is finite. Because of the identification of terminal nodes for utility purposes, Sard's theorem is not applicable in the way it was used in Kreps and Wilson (1982), and a structurally different proof strategy is developed. Some additional characterization of the equilibria are obtained in the process of the proof.Item A Theoretical Investigation of Handguns, Cops and Robbers(Center for Economic Research, Department of Economics, University of Minnesota, 2003-01) Boyd, John H.; Kim, JinWe study a theoretical general equilibrium environment in which the only activity of interest is armed robbery. Agents choose whether to be citizens or robbers, and whether to purchase handguns. Armed citizens can protect themselves from robbery but any armed agent runs the risk of accidentally shooting himself or another agent. The government chooses a gun tax, and the intensity of police efforts to arrest would-be robbers and citizens who arm for self-defense. Properties of an equilibrium are characterized and the model is calibrated and solved. In all cases unique equilibria are obtained. We find that guns are an inefficient way of redistributing wealth, in the sense that social costs are very large relative to actual wealth redistribution. In this model society would be vastly better off if handguns could be eliminated. We do find, however, that handguns substantially deter crime when crime is defined as taking another's wealth by force. Yet handguns cause accidental deaths and resultantly in this model policymakers confront a fundamental trade-off between property rights and gun deaths.