This collection of essays represents responses by over eighty scholars to an unusual request: give your high level assessment of the field of economic design, as broadly construed. Where do we come from? Where do we go from here? The book editors invited short, informal reflections expressing deeply felt but hard to demonstrate opinions, unsupported speculation, and controversial views of a kind one might not normally risk submitting for review. The contributors - both senior researchers who have shaped the field and promising, younger researchers - responded with a diverse collection of provocative pieces, including: retrospective assessments or surveys of the field; opinion papers; reflections on critical points for the development of the discipline; proposals for the immediate future; "science fiction"; and many more. The readers should have fun reading these unusual pieces - as much as the contributors enjoyed writing them.

The second edition of Herve Moulin's highly successful book outlines the fundamental concepts of game theory--one of the most provocative and fruitful applications of mathematics to the human sciences--and demonstrates its uses in economic and political discourse. Thoroughly revised, and now published with an accompanying workbook of 89 exercises, this rigorous yet accessible test explains the uses of game theory in largely nontechnical terms.

Moulin carefully discusses the behavioral scenarios underlying the various equilibrium concepts. He provides a self-contained exposition of basic equilibrium concepts for strategic games: perfect (sophisticated) equilibrium, Nash's noncooperative example, Aumann's strong and correlated example, and several versions of the core. The author is concerned less with mathematical refinements than with helping the reader understand the strategic stories backing these concepts. HIs examples therefore give a fair account of the current game models used in economics, politics, and sociology. Addressed here are oligopoly theory, the provision of public gtoods, auctions, voting procedures, and cost allocation problems, as well as the classic prisoner's dilemma, tic-tac-toe, and Marienbad games.

Extremely popular in its original French edition and in its first English version, Moulin's excellent introductory text is now, more than ever, "the" book to answer the essential questions about the application of game theory to the social sciences.

This work presents an overview of recent developments in social choice theory and welfare economics, drawn from the proceedings of the eighth conference in the International Symposia in Economic Theory and Econometrics series under the general editorship of William Barnett. The volume is divided into four parts, each exploring broad themes in social choice theory and welfare economics. First, an overview of the short, yet intense period of the subject's historical development. Second, a discussion of the ethical aspects of social choice, encompassing such issues as equal opportunity, individual rights and population monotonicity. Third, a study of the algebraic and combinatorial aspects of social choice theory. The final section is devoted to a study of aggregation with risk aversion to current and future variables, and the creation of a an intertemporal framework to go beyond the usual static description of income distributions measured over a short period.

This book presents an overview of developments in social choice theory and welfare economics, drawn from the proceedings of the eighth conference in the International Symposia in Economic Theory and Econometrics series under the general editorship of William Barnett. The volume is divided into four parts, each exploring broad themes in social choice theory and welfare economics. First, an overview of the short, yet intense, period of the subject's historical development. Second, a discussion of the ethical aspects of social choice, encompassing such issues as equal opportunity, individual rights, and population monotonicity. Third, a study of the algebraic and combinatorial aspects of social choice theory. The final section is devoted to a study of aggregation with risk aversion to current and future variables, and the creation of an intertemporal framework to go beyond the usual static description of income distributions measured over a short period.

This collection of essays represents responses by over eighty scholars to an unusual request: give your high level assessment of the field of economic design, as broadly construed. Where do we come from? Where do we go from here? The book editors invited short, informal reflections expressing deeply felt but hard to demonstrate opinions, unsupported speculation, and controversial views of a kind one might not normally risk submitting for review. The contributors - both senior researchers who have shaped the field and promising, younger researchers - responded with a diverse collection of provocative pieces, including: retrospective assessments or surveys of the field; opinion papers; reflections on critical points for the development of the discipline; proposals for the immediate future; "science fiction"; and many more. The readers should have fun reading these unusual pieces - as much as the contributors enjoyed writing them.

Over the past fifty years game theory has had a major impact on the field of economics. It was for work in game theory that the 1994 Nobel Prize in Economics was awarded. Although non-cooperative game theory is better known, the theory of cooperative games has contributed a number of fundamental ideas to microeconomic analysis. "Cooperative Microeconomics" is the definitive textbook on these contributions.

Designed to be used by undergraduate and graduate students, the book provides a thorough introduction and overview of its subject. Herve Moulin distinguishes among three primary modes of cooperation: cooperation by direct agreements; cooperation by just, equitable compromise; and cooperation by decentralized behavior. This tri-modal methodology is applied successively to the exchange of private goods, the fair division of unproduced commodities, the cooperative production of private and public goods, and cost-sharing.

Moulin proposes an elementary and self-contained exposition (supplemented by over 125 exercises) of the main cooperative concepts for microeconomic analysis, including core stability, deterministic solutions (such as the Shapley value), and several broad principles of equity (such as the No Envy and Stand Alone tests). The book also covers the most important failures of the decentralized behavior: the tragedy of the commons and the free rider problem in the provision of public goods. _Cooperative Microeconomics_ is the first book of its kind, and it will be widely used in courses in microeconomics and game theory.

Originally published in 1995.

The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905."

Over the past fifty years game theory has had a major impact on the field of economics. It was for work in game theory that the 1994 Nobel Prize in Economics was awarded. Although non-cooperative game theory is better known, the theory of cooperative games has contributed a number of fundamental ideas to microeconomic analysis. Cooperative Microeconomics is the definitive textbook on these contributions. Designed to be used by undergraduate and graduate students, the book provides a thorough introduction and overview of its subject. Herve Moulin distinguishes among three primary modes of cooperation: cooperation by direct agreements; cooperation by just, equitable compromise; and cooperation by decentralized behavior. This tri-modal methodology is applied successively to the exchange of private goods, the fair division of unproduced commodities, the cooperative production of private and public goods, and cost-sharing. Moulin proposes an elementary and self-contained exposition (supplemented by over 125 exercises) of the main cooperative concepts for microeconomic analysis, including core stability, deterministic solutions (such as the Shapley value), and several broad principles of equity (such as the No Envy and Stand Alone tests). The book also covers the most important failures of the decentralized behavior: the tragedy of the commons and the free rider problem in the provision of public goods. Cooperative Microeconomics is the first book of its kind, and it will be widely used in courses in microeconomics and game theory. Originally published in 1995. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

A comprehensive overview of networks and economic design, presenting models and results drawn from economics, operations research, and computer science; with examples and exercises. This book explores networks and economic design, focusing on the role played by allocation rules (revenue and cost-sharing schemes) in creating and sustaining efficient network solutions. It takes a normative approach, seeking economically efficient network solutions sustained by distributional fairness, and considers how different ways of allocating liability affect incentives for network usage and development. The text presents an up-to-date overview of models and results currently scattered over several strands of literature, drawing on economics, operations research, and computer science. The book's analysis of allocation problems includes such classic models from combinatorial optimization as the minimum cost spanning tree and the traveling salesman problem. It examines the planner's ability to design mechanisms that will implement efficient network structures, both in large decentralized networks and when there is user-agent information asymmetry. Offering systematic theoretical analyses of various compelling allocation rules in cases of fixed network structures as well as discussions of network design problems, the book covers such topics as tree-structured distribution systems, routing games, organizational hierarchies, the "price of anarchy," mechanism design, and efficient implementation. Appropriate as a reference for practitioners in network regulation and the network industry or as a text for graduate students, the book offers numerous illustrative examples and end-of-chapter exercises that highlight the concepts and methods presented.

The concept of fair division is as old as civil society itself. Aristotle's "equal treatment of equals" was the first step toward a formal definition of distributive fairness. The concept of collective welfare, more than two centuries old, is a pillar of modern economic analysis. Reflecting fifty years of research, this book examines the contribution of modern microeconomic thinking to distributive justice. Taking the modern axiomatic approach, it compares normative arguments of distributive justice and their relation to efficiency and collective welfare.The book begins with the epistemological status of the axiomatic approach and the four classic principles of distributive justice: compensation, reward, exogenous rights, and fitness. It then presents the simple ideas of equal gains, equal losses, and proportional gains and losses. The book discusses three cardinal interpretations of collective welfare: Bentham's "utilitarian" proposal to maximize the sum of individual utilities, the Nash product, and the egalitarian leximin ordering. It also discusses the two main ordinal definitions of collective welfare: the majority relation and the Borda scoring method.The Shapley value is the single most important contribution of game theory to distributive justice. A formula to divide jointly produced costs or benefits fairly, it is especially useful when the pattern of externalities renders useless the simple ideas of equality and proportionality. The book ends with two versatile methods for dividing commodities efficiently and fairly when only ordinal preferences matter: competitive equilibrium with equal incomes and egalitarian equivalence. The book contains a wealth of empirical examples and exercises.