Authority and Social Assets

该项目由两部分组成。第一部分阐述了缺陷在改变人们行为方面的作用。法律不会直接改变代理人的报酬。在标准的均衡概念下，法律的作用是协调的作用。不同的人或团体有不同的有效协调能力，任何特定的人都不可能在所有情况下都能同样好地协调。一个人或一个群体在特殊情况下拥有“权威”，如果他们能够在这种情况下协调行为的平衡。我们分析了人的特征和允许在这一意义上获得权威的问题。第二部分继续主要研究者先前的工作，将社会安排纳入经济模型。以前的发现表明，当市场存在某种不完备性时，通常会出现结果的不确定性，而所谓的社会安排就是因为这种不确定性而产生的。在以前的工作中，可以被称为“社会资产”的东西起到了作用。社会资产是从任何生产角度来看都不相关的资产，但在特定的社会安排支配下，在均衡中具有价值。目前的研究展示了一个社会资产产生的模型，并调查了潜在社会资产的决定因素。

This project consists of two parts. The first part addresses the role oflaws in changing people's behavior. Laws do not directly change agents'payoffs. With the standard equilibrium concepts, the role of laws is thenone of coordination. Different people or groups have differing abilities tocoordinate effectively, and any given person will not be able to coordinateequally well in all situations. A person or group has "authority" in aparticular situation if there is an equilibrium in which they can coordinatebehavior for that situation. We analyze the characteristics of people and ofproblems that allow authority in this sense to obtain.The second part continues previous work by the principle investigators incorporating social arrangements into economic models. Previous findings revealed that when there is some incompleteness in markets there will typically be an indeterminacy in outcomes, and that what might be called social arrangements arise because of this indeterminacy. In previous work, what might be called "social assets" played a role. Social assets are assets that are irrelevant from any productive standpoint, but have value in equilibria when particular social arrangements govern. The current research lays out a model in which social assets arise, and investigates the determinants of potential social assets.