Topics in Dynamics, Competition, Contracts, and Voting

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The project has several distinct parts. Each component addresses a fundamental problem in an important area of economics. In the first part, we propose a game-theoretic solution concept called a Markov equilibrium. Economists use dynamic games to make predictions about how economic actors interact strategically over time. Markov equilibrium is a tool for making sharper predictions in these dynamic games. We extend the notion of a Markov equilibrium to include situations in which actions of agents cannot be observed, and situations in which agents learn by experimentation. We use these tools to examine dynamic inequality and segregation. In the second part we propose to examine the efficiency of auctions. Auctions are a commonly-used mechanist for allocating goods across buyers. We plan to investigate which auctions do the best job of ensuring that the complex goods end up in the hands of the buyers who value them the most. Third, we plan to study the extent to which the difficulty of foreseeing or specifying future contingencies may interfere with contract negotiations between two economic parties. In our model, we address the difficult problem of agents who cannot make contracts contingent on every state of nature, but can make contracts contingent on future payoffs. Finally, we propose to investigate which voting rules (e.g., majority rule or plurality rule) are robust in the sense that they work `well` (satisfy certain standard desiderata) in as wide set of circumstances as possible.