I have posted an updated draft of the working paper with Dimitrios Diamantaras (Temple University, Philadelphia) on social opinion formation and ambiguity in the (global) environmental debate. The paper is posted on the game theory page. The paper has been revised and edited to be more clear in the presentation of its conclusions.
Emperors of the network economy
This week news emerged that senior managers at large corporations (FTSE100) gave themselves an average pay rise of 55%. (Today there was a response by an executive that this pay rise was “only” 23%…) This followed earlier news that investment bankers have increased their bonuses to record levels as they face record profits. These tremendous…
Analyzing partial cooperation in economic behavior
I have posted a new working paper with Subhadip Chakrabarti and Emiliya Lazarova (Both from Queen’s University Belfast) on the game theory page. This paper addresses the question of how groups of decision makers cooperate and make decisions. To that end we modify the standard Nash equilibrium concept to capture such cooperative behavior. Existence theorems…
Stiglitz in Glasgow
I just returned from the meetings of the European Economic Association (EEA) in Glasgow. It was a good opportunity to assess the state of economics (as a science) after the collapse of the global financial system in 2008. As remarked by Phil Mirowski in a recent article, the state of economics is not very good…
Network formation paper posted
A new version of my paper with Sudipta Sarangi on belief-based behavior in network formation with communication costs has been posted. The old version is retained as well for more examples and discussion. Please visit the network formation page.
Failure in the global relational economy
Yesterday, news broke that the SEC is accusing Goldman-Sachs of exploiting its middleman position for fraudulent purposes. This case is a striking example of what failures the relational or network structure of the global economy can cause without proper regulation and governance. In fact, this case has several important implications for our understanding of the global economy.