[go: up one dir, main page]
IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nwu/cmsems/1018.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

When are Agents Negligible?

Author

Listed:
  • Wolfgang Pesendorfer
  • David Levine
Abstract
We examine the following paradox: In a dynamic setting, an arbitrarily large finite number of agents adn a continuum of agents can lead to radically different equilibrium outcomes. We show that in a simple strategic setting this paradox is a general phenomenon. We also show that the paradox disappears when there is noisy observation of the players' actions: The aggregate level of noise must disappear as the number of players increases, but not too rapidly. We give several economic examples in which this paradox has recently received attention: the durable goods monopoly, corporate takeovers, and time consistency of optimal governmetn policy.

Suggested Citation

  • Wolfgang Pesendorfer & David Levine, 1992. "When are Agents Negligible?," Discussion Papers 1018, Northwestern University, Center for Mathematical Studies in Economics and Management Science.
    • Handle: RePEc:nwu:cmsems:1018
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/research/math/papers/1018.pdf
    File Function: main text
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Bagwell, Kyle, 1995. "Commitment and observability in games," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 8(2), pages 271-280.
    2. Bagnoli, Mark & Salant, Stephen W & Swierzbinski, Joseph E, 1989. "Durable-Goods Monopoly with Discrete Demand," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 97(6), pages 1459-1478, December.
    3. Celentani, Marco & Pesendorfer, Wolfgang, 1996. "Reputation in Dynamic Games," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 70(1), pages 109-132, July.
    4. Chari, V V & Kehoe, Patrick J, 1990. "Sustainable Plans," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 98(4), pages 783-802, August.
    5. Nabil Al-Najjar, 1992. "The Coase Conjecture in Markets with a Finite Number of Consumers," Cahiers de recherche du Département des sciences économiques, UQAM 9211, Université du Québec à Montréal, Département des sciences économiques.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Phelan, Christopher, 2006. "Public trust and government betrayal," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 130(1), pages 27-43, September.
    2. Benhabib, Jess & Velasco, Andres, 1994. "On the Economics of Fiscal Populism in an Open Economy," Working Papers 94-22, C.V. Starr Center for Applied Economics, New York University.
    3. Mostafa Beshkar & Jee-Hyeong Park, 2017. "Dispute Settlement with Second-Order Uncertainty: The Case of International Trade Disputes," CAEPR Working Papers 2017-010, Center for Applied Economics and Policy Research, Department of Economics, Indiana University Bloomington.
    4. Chantal Marlats, 2021. "Reputation effects in stochastic games with two long-lived players," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 71(1), pages 1-31, February.
    5. Jean-Bernard Chatelain & Kirsten Ralf, 2017. "Can We Identify the Fed's Preferences?," Working Papers halshs-01549908, HAL.
    6. Chatelain, Jean-Bernard & Ralf, Kirsten, 2020. "Hopf Bifurcation from New-Keynesian Taylor Rule to Ramsey Optimal Policy," EconStor Open Access Articles, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics.
    7. Harold L. Cole & Timothy J. Kehoe, 1996. "A self-fulfilling model of Mexico's 1994-95 debt crisis," Staff Report 210, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.
    8. Marco Bassetto, 2002. "A Game-Theoretic View of the Fiscal Theory of the Price Level," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 70(6), pages 2167-2195, November.
    9. Yang, Hui & Chen, Jing & Chen, Xu & Chen, Bintong, 2017. "The impact of customer returns in a supply chain with a common retailer," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 256(1), pages 139-150.
    10. MITRAILLE Sébastien & MOREAUX Michel, 2007. "Inventories and Endogenous Stackelberg Hierarchy in Two-period Cournot Oligopoly," LERNA Working Papers 07.02.223, LERNA, University of Toulouse.
    11. John Boyce & Jeffrey Robert Church & Lucia Vojtassak, "undated". "Capacity Constraints in Durable Goods Monopoly: Coase and Hotelling," Working Papers 2012-07, Department of Economics, University of Calgary, revised 08 Aug 2012.
    12. Lagunoff, Roger, 2006. "Credible communication in dynastic government," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 90(1-2), pages 59-86, January.
    13. Ramon Caminal, 2016. "Dynamic Product Diversity," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 64(1), pages 1-26, March.
    14. Facundo Piguillem & Anderson Schneider, 2013. "Heterogeneous Labor Skills, The Median Voter and Labor Taxes," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 16(2), pages 332-349, April.
    15. Ricardo F. Reis & Phillip C. Stocken, 2007. "Strategic Consequences of Historical Cost and Fair Value Measurements," Contemporary Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 24(2), pages 557-584, June.
    16. Benhabib, Jess & Rustichini, Aldo, 1997. "Optimal Taxes without Commitment," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 77(2), pages 231-259, December.
    17. Carlos Garriga, 2019. "Optimal Fiscal Policy in Overlapping Generations Models," Public Finance Review, , vol. 47(1), pages 3-31, January.
    18. Gorostiaga, Arantza, 2003. "Should fiscal policy be different in a non-competitive framework?," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(6), pages 1311-1331, September.
    19. Barry Eichengreen., 1989. "The Capital Levy in Theory and Practice," Economics Working Papers 89-117, University of California at Berkeley.
    20. Walter Beckert, 2004. "Dynamic Monopolies with Stochastic Demand," Birkbeck Working Papers in Economics and Finance 0404, Birkbeck, Department of Economics, Mathematics & Statistics.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nwu:cmsems:1018. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Fran Walker (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cmnwuus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.