{"title":"Mean-field approximation of forward-looking population dynamics","authors":"Ryota Iijima , Daisuke Oyama","doi":"10.1016/j.jet.2025.106079","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jet.2025.106079","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>We study how the equilibrium dynamics of a continuum-population game approximate those of large finite-population games. New agents stochastically arrive to replace exiting ones and make irreversible action choices to maximize the expected discounted lifetime payoffs. The key assumption is that they only observe imperfect signals about the action distribution in the population. We first show that the stochastic process of the action distribution in the finite-population game is approximated by its mean-field dynamics as the population size becomes large, where the approximation precision is uniform across all equilibria. Based on this result, we then establish continuity properties of the equilibria at the large population limit. In particular, each agent becomes almost negligible, in the sense that in equilibrium, each agent's action is almost optimal against the (incorrect) belief that it has no impact on others' actions as presumed in the continuum-population case. Finally, for binary-action supermodular games, we show that when agents are patient, there is a unique equilibrium as observation noise becomes small while the population size becomes large. In this equilibrium, every agent chooses a risk-dominant action, and the population globally converges to the corresponding steady state.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48393,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Economic Theory","volume":"230 ","pages":"Article 106079"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2025-09-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145120487","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The evolution of resilience","authors":"David K. Levine","doi":"10.1016/j.jet.2025.106078","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jet.2025.106078","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>I analyze a social evolutionary model in which there is a non-excludable public good that reduces the chances of catastrophe. I show that while resilient types that produce the public good cannot survive head-to-head competition with other more selfish types in a fixed population, they do if catastrophes reduce population.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48393,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Economic Theory","volume":"230 ","pages":"Article 106078"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2025-09-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145108578","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A dynamic Roy model of academic specialization","authors":"Titan Alon , Daniel Fershtman","doi":"10.1016/j.jet.2025.106077","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jet.2025.106077","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This paper generalizes the canonical model of human capital accumulation through schooling to endogenize the process of academic specialization. It provides the solution to a class of dynamic investment problems with switching and stopping under sequential uncertainty. Under mild assumptions, the model's optimal policy has a particularly simple form that can be reduced to the comparison of independent indices. The optimal policy implies that schooling should begin with a period of general education, common to all students, followed by a period of gradual academic specialization before graduation. At the microeconomic level, it is consistent with the dynamics of student course taking observed in the data and the outcomes of educational interventions studied in the literature. At the macroeconomic level, its predictions are consistent with models of how education should adapt to changes in the speed and scope of technological change in labor markets.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48393,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Economic Theory","volume":"229 ","pages":"Article 106077"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2025-09-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145019734","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Spontaneous discrimination with endogenous information disclosure","authors":"Arno Apffelstaedt","doi":"10.1016/j.jet.2025.106076","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jet.2025.106076","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>I introduce endogenous information disclosure into a model of “spontaneous discrimination” à la <span><span>Peski and Szentes (2013)</span></span>. Individuals in a finite population repeatedly decide whether to engage in profitable interactions with a randomly assigned or chosen partner. Each individual has a fixed physical and a dynamic social color. Social color conveys information about the colors of past partners—but only if that information is disclosed by the decision maker or a random observer. I characterize conditions under which endogenous disclosure supports inefficient equilibria where individuals discriminate by conditioning interactions on the (payoff-irrelevant) colors of potential partners. The analysis shows how competition for being selected as partner interacts with discriminatory norms to create strict incentives for information disclosure, thereby sustaining discrimination that would otherwise break down.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48393,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Economic Theory","volume":"229 ","pages":"Article 106076"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2025-08-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144922530","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Information agreements","authors":"Kemal Kıvanç Aköz , Arseniy Samsonov","doi":"10.1016/j.jet.2025.106068","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jet.2025.106068","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>We define a (cooperative) informational bargaining problem, where several agents have to agree on the persuasion of a receiver. The bargaining set includes payoff vectors that can be generated by information structures and disagreement leads to an exogenous benchmark that may involve full or no information. We characterize the existence of an agreement that benefits all agents when preferences are state-independent. Our characterization yields conditions that depend only on the payoff structure but are independent of the prior beliefs in some cases. We analyze Pareto efficient information structures in two applications: selection environments, where the receiver picks the best agent, and the bargaining between a retailer platform and a regulator on consumer privacy regulation.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48393,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Economic Theory","volume":"229 ","pages":"Article 106068"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2025-08-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144903699","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Biased mediation: Selection and effectiveness","authors":"Jin Yeub Kim , Jong Jae Lee","doi":"10.1016/j.jet.2025.106069","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jet.2025.106069","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This paper presents a theory of mediator selection in conflicts that compares biased and unbiased mediation. We characterize optimal mechanisms used by biased mediators when they are selected into mediation, and determine when and how parties in dispute accept a biased mediator in equilibrium. We find that when asymmetric information is significant, parties accept biased mediation as long as the degree of mediator bias is not too strong. Biased mediators care more about the payoffs of their favored party. Nevertheless, we find that biased mediators can be equally effective in promoting peace as the unbiased mediator. This is because biased mediators use recommendation strategies that allocate more shares of resource to their favored party while providing a higher chance of peaceful settlement to a weaker type of their disfavored party.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48393,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Economic Theory","volume":"229 ","pages":"Article 106069"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2025-08-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144902660","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Dynamic consistency in games without expected utility","authors":"Andrés Perea","doi":"10.1016/j.jet.2025.106067","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jet.2025.106067","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Within dynamic games we are interested in conditions on the players' preferences that imply <em>dynamic consistency</em> and the existence of <em>sequentially optimal strategies</em>. The latter means that the strategy is optimal at each of the player's information sets, given his beliefs there. To explore these properties we assume, following <span><span>Gilboa and Schmeidler (2003)</span></span> and <span><span>Perea (2025a)</span></span>, that every player holds a <em>conditional preference relation</em> – a mapping that assigns to every probabilistic belief about the opponents' strategies a preference relation over his own strategies. We identify sets of very basic conditions on the conditional preference relations that guarantee dynamic consistency and the existence of sequentially optimal strategies, respectively. These conditions are implied by, but are much weaker than, assuming expected utility. Moreover, it is shown that non-expected utility is compatible with dynamic consistency and consequentialism in our framework.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48393,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Economic Theory","volume":"229 ","pages":"Article 106067"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2025-08-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144926092","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Social learning through coarse signals of others' actions","authors":"Wenji Xu","doi":"10.1016/j.jet.2025.106066","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jet.2025.106066","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This paper studies a sequential social learning model in which agents learn about an underlying state from others' actions. Unlike classic models, we consider a setting where agents may observe coarse signals of past actions. We identify a simple, necessary, and sufficient condition for asymptotic learning, called <em>separability</em>, which depends on both the information environment and the payoff structure. A necessary condition for separability is “unbounded beliefs” which requires agents' private information to generate strong evidence of the true state, even if only with small probabilities. We also identify conditions on the information environment alone that guarantee separability for all payoff structures. These conditions include unbounded beliefs and a new condition on agents' signals of others' actions, termed <em>double thresholds</em>. Without double thresholds, learning can be confounded so that agents always choose different actions with positive probabilities and never reach a consensus.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48393,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Economic Theory","volume":"229 ","pages":"Article 106066"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2025-08-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145019733","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Deadlines and matching","authors":"Garth Baughman","doi":"10.1016/j.jet.2025.106065","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jet.2025.106065","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Deadlines and fixed end dates are pervasive in matching markets. Deadlines drive fundamental non-stationarity and complexity in behavior, generating significant departures from the steady-state equilibria usually studied in the search and matching literature. I consider a two-sided matching market with search frictions where vertically differentiated agents attempt to form bilateral matches before a deadline. I give novel proofs of existence and uniqueness of equilibria, and show that all equilibria exhibit an “anticipation effect” where less attractive agents become increasingly choosy over time, preferring to wait for the opportunity to match with attractive agents who, in turn, become less selective as the deadline approaches. When agents are patient, a sharp characterization is available: at any point in time, the market segments into a first class of matching agents and a second class of waiting agents. This points to a different interpretation of unraveling.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48393,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Economic Theory","volume":"228 ","pages":"Article 106065"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2025-08-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144830999","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Reputation and the credibility of inflation plans","authors":"Rumen Kostadinov , Francisco Roldán","doi":"10.1016/j.jet.2025.106062","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jet.2025.106062","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>We study the optimal design of inflation targets by a planner who lacks commitment and exerts imperfect control over inflation. By comparing realized inflation to the targets, the public forms beliefs about the government's commitment. Such reputation is valuable as it helps curb inflation expectations. However, plans that are more tempting to break lead to faster reputational losses in the ensuing equilibrium. The planner's optimal announcement balances low inflation promises with incentives to enhance credibility. We find that, despite the absence of private sources of inflation inertia, a gradual disinflation is preferred even in the zero-reputation limit.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48393,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Economic Theory","volume":"229 ","pages":"Article 106062"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2025-08-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144865207","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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