A theory of cooperation in games with an application to market socialism
John Roemer
No 2125, Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers from Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics, Yale University
Abstract:
Economic theory has focused almost exclusively on how humans compete with each other in their economic activity, culminating in general equilibrium (Walras) and game theory (Nash). Cooperation in economic activity is, however, important, and is virtually ignored. Because our models influence our view of the world, this theoretical lacuna biases economists' interpretation of economic behavior. Here, I propose models that provide micro-foundations for how cooperation is decentralized by economic agents. It is wrong, in particular, to view competition as decentralized and cooperation as organized only by central diktat. My approach is not to alter preferences, which is the strategy behavioral economists have adopted to produce cooperation, but rather to alter the way that agents optimize. Whereas Nash optimizers view other players in the game as part of the environment (parameters), Kantian optimizers view them as part of action. When formalized, this approach resolves the two major failures of Nash optimization from a welfare viewpoint -- the Pareto inefficiency of equilibria in common-pool resource problems (the tragedy of the commons) and the inefficiency of equilibria in public-good games (the free rider problem). An application to market socialism shows that the problems of efficiency and distribution can be completely separated: the dead-weight loss of taxation disappears.
Keywords: Kantian equilibrium; cooperation; tragedy of the commons; free rider problem; market socialism (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D50 D60 D70 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 36 pages
Date: 2018-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm, nep-evo, nep-exp, nep-gth, nep-hme and nep-hpe
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)
Downloads: (external link)
https://cowles.yale.edu/sites/default/files/files/pub/d21/d2125.pdf (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 404 Not Found
Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.
Export reference: BibTeX
RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan)
HTML/Text
Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cwl:cwldpp:2125
Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
Cowles Foundation, Yale University, Box 208281, New Haven, CT 06520-8281 USA
The price is None.
Access Statistics for this paper
More papers in Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers from Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics, Yale University Yale University, Box 208281, New Haven, CT 06520-8281 USA. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Brittany Ladd ().