On the Notion of Social Institutions

Guilherme Carmona

Game Theory and Information from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: We argue that it is natural to study social institutions within the framework of standard game theory (i.e., only by resorting to concepts like players, actions, strategies, information sets, payoff functions, and stochastic processes describing the moves of nature, which constitute a stochastic game when combined) --- concepts like ``social norms,'' and ``mechanisms'' can be easily accommodated, as well as philosophical/sociological definitions of social institutions Focusing on strategies rather than on mechanisms have two advantages: First, focusing on strategies allows us to distinguish between those aspects that are behavioral in nature and are subject to alternative design, and those that are part of the environment. Second, considering strategies allows for a more detailed look into the way an outcome function is ``genuinely implemented'' (see Hurwicz (1996)).

Keywords: Social institutions; mechanism design (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C73 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 15 pages
Date: 2004-02-27
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hpe
Note: Type of Document - pdf; prepared on winxp; to print on general; pages: 15; figures: 0. none
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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Related works:
Working Paper: On the notion of social institutions (2002)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wpa:wuwpga:0402005

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