{"title":"Evolutionary implementation with partially effective institutions","authors":"Ratul Lahkar","doi":"10.1016/j.mathsocsci.2024.12.004","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.mathsocsci.2024.12.004","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>We consider large population models of a public goods game and a tragedy of the commons. A planner applies externality pricing in these models. However, institutions in society are only partially effective. Hence, the externality price does not compel agents to internalize externalities fully. The resulting externality-adjusted game with partially effective institutions is a potential game. Evolutionary dynamics converge to its Nash equilibrium. More effective institutions bring this Nash equilibrium closer to the original Pareto efficient state. We trace the effectiveness of institutions to a primeval Tullock contest over natural resources in society. The society’s institutional structure arises from the contest’s Nash equilibrium. The institutional structure is more inclusive if natural resources in the contest are less appropriable. Institutions are then also more effective in implementing externality pricing.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":51118,"journal":{"name":"Mathematical Social Sciences","volume":"134 ","pages":"Pages 1-13"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2025-01-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143175364","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Optimal top-n policy","authors":"Isa Hafalir , Siqi Pan , Kentaro Tomoeda","doi":"10.1016/j.mathsocsci.2024.12.001","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.mathsocsci.2024.12.001","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>A widely adopted affirmative action policy in the university sector is the “top-<span><math><mi>n</mi></math></span>” policy, where the universities guarantee admission to students in the top <span><math><mi>n</mi></math></span> fraction of their class from every high school. The efficacy of the top-<span><math><mi>n</mi></math></span> policy in university integration has been questioned because students strategically relocate to low-achieving high schools. We show that when minorities are less likely to strategize than others, the policy can even segregate minorities from the target university, compared to the school-blind policy. A suitably chosen eligibility requirement, featuring the minimum time students must spend at a high school in order to be eligible for top-<span><math><mi>n</mi></math></span> admissions, can restore the efficacy of this policy. However, the most stringent requirement is not always optimal. The optimal requirement depends on the original distribution of students across high schools.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":51118,"journal":{"name":"Mathematical Social Sciences","volume":"133 ","pages":"Pages 34-48"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2025-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143092906","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Condorcet domains on at most seven alternatives","authors":"Dolica Akello-Egwel , Charles Leedham-Green , Alastair Litterick , Klas Markström , Søren Riis","doi":"10.1016/j.mathsocsci.2024.12.002","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.mathsocsci.2024.12.002","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>A Condorcet domain is a collection of linear orders which avoid Condorcet’s paradox for majority voting. We have developed a new algorithm for complete enumeration of all maximal Condorcet domains and, using a supercomputer, obtained the first enumeration of all maximal Condorcet domains on <span><math><mrow><mi>n</mi><mo>≤</mo><mn>7</mn></mrow></math></span> alternatives.</div><div>We investigate properties of these domains and use this study to resolve several open questions regarding Condorcet domains, and propose several new conjectures. Following this we connect our results to other domain types used in voting theory, such a non-dictatorial and strategy-proof domains. All our data are made freely available on the web.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":51118,"journal":{"name":"Mathematical Social Sciences","volume":"133 ","pages":"Pages 23-33"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2025-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143092905","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"With a little help from my friends: Essentiality vs opportunity in group criticality","authors":"M. Aleandri, M. Dall’Aglio","doi":"10.1016/j.mathsocsci.2024.11.004","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.mathsocsci.2024.11.004","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>We define a notion of the criticality of a player for simple monotone games based on cooperation with other players, either to form a winning coalition or to break a winning one, with an essential role for all the players involved. We compare it with the notion of differential criticality given by Beisbart that measures power as the opportunity left by other players.</div><div>We prove that our proposal satisfies an extension of the strong monotonicity introduced by Young, assigns no power to null players, does not reward free riders, and can easily be computed from the minimal winning and blocking coalitions. An application to the Italian elections is presented.</div><div>Our analysis shows that the measures of group criticality defined so far cannot weigh essential players while only remaining an opportunity measure. We propose a group opportunity test to reconcile the two views.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":51118,"journal":{"name":"Mathematical Social Sciences","volume":"133 ","pages":"Pages 13-22"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2025-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143092907","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Robots and humans: The role of fiscal and monetary policies in an endogenous growth model","authors":"Óscar Afonso , Elena Sochirca , Pedro Cunha Neves","doi":"10.1016/j.mathsocsci.2024.11.005","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.mathsocsci.2024.11.005","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>In this paper we develop an endogenous growth model to analyze how fiscal and monetary policies can manage the macroeconomic effects of the robotization process. We consider that unskilled labor can be replaced by robots and that: <em>(i)</em> the government collects tax revenues to invest in social capital and compensate those who lose their jobs; <em>(ii)</em> there is monetary policy with cash-in-advance restrictions; <em>(iii)</em> social capital contributes to increasing technological-knowledge progress. Our results confirm that robotization stimulates economic growth, but contributes to widening wage inequality between skilled and unskilled workers. We show that, under specific circumstances, an expansionary monetary policy or a more progressive taxation can attenuate such widening effect. We also show that public investment in social capital and public transfers to those who lose their jobs play a crucial role in attenuating the negative consequences of rising unemployment caused by robotization.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":51118,"journal":{"name":"Mathematical Social Sciences","volume":"133 ","pages":"Pages 49-59"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2025-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143128412","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The morality of markets. A critique","authors":"Grégory Ponthière , Nicolas Stevens","doi":"10.1016/j.mathsocsci.2024.12.003","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.mathsocsci.2024.12.003","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Dewatripont and Tirole (2024) defend the morality of markets on the ground of an irrelevance result: the social production of moral actions is independent from competitive pressure on markets. No matter how strong competitive pressure is, markets perform well in diffusing signals about moral values and in coordinating suppliers of moral actions. In this article, we argue, on the contrary, that markets lead to a double crowding out of moral values: first, imperfect transmission of moral values on markets leads to an underproduction of moral actions despite the presence of highly ethical suppliers; second, competitive pressure on markets favors the eviction of highly ethical suppliers by less ethical suppliers. Furthermore, we highlight that this double crowding-out restricts the normative scope of the irrelevance result, and raises the question of what the division of moral labor should be between citizens, firms and States.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":51118,"journal":{"name":"Mathematical Social Sciences","volume":"134 ","pages":"Pages 14-19"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2024-12-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143175366","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Stability and optimal double auction design for a two-sided market","authors":"Aditya Vikram","doi":"10.1016/j.mathsocsci.2024.11.003","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.mathsocsci.2024.11.003","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>We investigate the stability of internet platform trading mechanisms using the notion of ex-ante incentive compatible core defined by Forges et al. (2002) in the context of an exchange economy. A mechanism can be blocked by a single buyer and seller pair if they can find an interim incentive-compatible trading mechanism that gives them higher ex-ante expected utilities. Standard double auction mechanisms like the trade reduction mechanism and McAfee double auction mechanism may not be single-buyer–single-seller (SBSS) ex-ante stable. We characterize interim incentive-compatible, interim individually-rational, symmetric and revenue-maximizing mechanisms that are SBSS ex-ante stable using methods in Myerson and Satterthwaite (1983).</div></div>","PeriodicalId":51118,"journal":{"name":"Mathematical Social Sciences","volume":"133 ","pages":"Pages 1-12"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2024-11-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142743600","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Consistent conjectures in dynamic matching markets","authors":"Laura Doval , Pablo Schenone","doi":"10.1016/j.mathsocsci.2024.11.002","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.mathsocsci.2024.11.002","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>We provide a framework to study stability notions for two-sided dynamic matching markets in which matching is one-to-one and irreversible. The framework gives center stage to the set of matchings an agent anticipates would ensue should they remain unmatched, which we refer to as the agent’s <em>conjectures</em>. A collection of conjectures, together with a pairwise stability and individual rationality requirement given the conjectures, defines a solution concept for the economy. We identify a sufficient condition — <em>consistency</em> — for a family of conjectures to lead to a nonempty solution (cf. Hafalir, 2008). As an application, we introduce two families of consistent conjectures and their corresponding solution concepts: continuation-value-respecting dynamic stability, and the extension to dynamic markets of the solution concept in Hafalir (2008), sophisticated dynamic stability.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":51118,"journal":{"name":"Mathematical Social Sciences","volume":"132 ","pages":"Pages 114-127"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2024-11-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142701104","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Inequality and bipolarization-reducing mixed taxation","authors":"Oriol Carbonell-Nicolau","doi":"10.1016/j.mathsocsci.2024.11.001","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.mathsocsci.2024.11.001","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Progressive income and commodity tax structures have been examined independently in terms of their ability to reduce income inequality and bipolarization. Rather than focusing on income and commodity taxes in isolation, this paper studies mixed tax systems, which subject both income and consumption to taxation. It provides necessary and sufficient conditions on the structure of these systems that ensure a reduction in income inequality and bipolarization for both exogenous and endogenous income scenarios. Commodity taxation is “superfluous” in the case of exogenous income, as any post-tax income distribution achievable through a mixed tax system can be replicated by income taxation alone. In contrast, when income is endogenous, there are cases where relying solely on income taxation is ineffective, while mixed tax structures have equalizing and depolarizing potential.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":51118,"journal":{"name":"Mathematical Social Sciences","volume":"132 ","pages":"Pages 128-145"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2024-11-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142701105","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Project selection with partially verifiable information","authors":"Sumit Goel , Wade Hann-Caruthers","doi":"10.1016/j.mathsocsci.2024.10.003","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.mathsocsci.2024.10.003","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>We study a principal–agent project selection problem with asymmetric information. The principal must choose exactly one of <span><math><mi>N</mi></math></span> projects, each defined by the utility it provides to the principal and to the agent. The agent knows all the utilities, and the principal can commit to a mechanism (without transfers) that maps the agent’s report about the utilities to a chosen project. Unlike the typical literature, which assumes the agent can lie arbitrarily, we examine the principal’s problem under partial verifiability constraints. We characterize the class of truthful mechanisms under a family of partial verifiability constraints and study the principal’s problem for the specific cases of no-overselling and no-underselling. Our results suggest significant benefits for the principal from identifying or inducing such partial verifiability constraints, while also highlighting the simple mechanisms that perform well.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":51118,"journal":{"name":"Mathematical Social Sciences","volume":"132 ","pages":"Pages 105-113"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2024-11-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142662081","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}