Research Database

This paper surveys cooperative game theory when players have incomplete or asymmetric information, especially when the TU and NTU games are derived from economic models. First some results relating balanced games and markets are summarized, including theorems guaranteeing that the core is nonempty. Then the basic pure exchange economy is extended to include asymmetric information. The possibilities for such models to generate cooperative games are examined. Here the core is emphasized as a solution, and criteria are given for its nonemptiness. Finally, an alternative approach is explored based on Harsanyi’s formulation of games with incomplete information.

We study a one-sector growth model which is standard except for the presence of an externality in the production function. The set of competitive equilibria is large. It includes constant equilibria, sunspot equilibria, cyclical and chaotic equilibria, and equilibria with deterministic or stochastic regime switching. The efficient allocation is characterized by constant employment and a constant growth rate. We identify an income tax-subsidy schedule that supports the efficient allocation as the unique equilibrium outcome. That schedule has two properties: (i) it specifies the tax rate to be an increasing function of aggregate employment, and (ii) earnings are subsidized when aggregate employment is at its efficient level. The first feature eliminates inefficient, fluctuating equilibria, while the second induces agents to internalize the externality.

In this paper we develop a model in which a country faces a balance of payments crisis if constraints on its international borrowing bind. We use the model to describe the dynamics of the trade balance, capital account, and balance of payments of a country that borrows to finance consumption following sweeping macroeconomic and structural reforms and then hits constraints on its international borrowing. We compare the predictions of this theoretical example with events in Mexico from 1987 through 1995.

We highlight an example of considerable bias in officially published input-output data (factor-income shares) by an LDC (Turkey), which many researchers use without question. We make use of an intertemporal general equilibrium model of trade and production to evaluate the dynamic gains for Turkey from currently debated trade policy options and compare the predictions using conservatively adjusted, rather than official, data on factor shares. We show that the predicted welfare gains are not only of a different order of magnitude, but in some cases, of a different sign, hence, suggesting contradictory policy recommendations.

A traditional explanation for why sovereign governments repay debts is that they want to keep good reputations so they can easily borrow more. Bulow and Rogoff show that this argument is invalid under two conditions: (i) there is a single debt relationship, and (ii) regardless of their past actions, governments can earn the (possibly state-contingent) market rate of return by saving abroad. Bulow and Rogoff conjecture that, even under condition (ii), in more general reputation models with multiple relationships and spillover across them, reputation may support debt. This paper shows what is needed for this conjecture to be true.

Most empirical studies of the static CAPM assume that betas remain constant over time and that the return on the value-weighted portfolio of all stocks is a proxy for the return on aggregate wealth. The general consensus is that the static CAPM is unable to explain satisfactorily the cross-section of average returns on stocks. We assume that the CAPM holds in a conditional sense, i.e., betas and the market risk premium vary over time. We include the return on human capital when measuring the return on aggregate wealth. Our specification performs well in explaining the cross-section of average returns.

We provide a brief review of the techniques that are based on the Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) and used for evaluating capital asset pricing models. We first develop the CAPM and multi-beta models and discuss the classical two-stage regression method originally used to evaluate them. We then describe the pricing kernel representation of a generic asset pricing model; this representation facilitates use of the GMM in a natural way for evaluating the conditional and unconditional versions of most asset pricing models. We also discuss diagnostic methods that provide additional insights.