IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/gamebe/v105y2017icp297-315.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Sequential commitment games

Author

Listed:
  • Arieli, Itai
  • Babichenko, Yakov
  • Tennenholtz, Moshe

Abstract

We consider an extensive-form game in which players have the option to commit to actions before the game is played. We focus on commitment procedures where players make voluntary irreversible commitments in a prescribed order over the decision nodes. We study whether such commitment procedures may lead to Pareto-efficient outcomes. Our main result is surprisingly positive: for two-player games, we introduce an order over the decision nodes for which the unique subgame perfect equilibrium outcome is Pareto-efficient for every strict preference of the players over the outcomes. We show that the above result does not hold for games with four players.

Suggested Citation

  • Arieli, Itai & Babichenko, Yakov & Tennenholtz, Moshe, 2017. "Sequential commitment games," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 105(C), pages 297-315.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:gamebe:v:105:y:2017:i:c:p:297-315
    DOI: 10.1016/j.geb.2017.08.009
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0899825617301434
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.geb.2017.08.009?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Dutta, Rohan & Ishii, Ryosuke, 2016. "Dynamic commitment games, efficiency and coordination," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 163(C), pages 699-727.
    2. Leonid Hurwicz, 2008. "But Who Will Guard the Guardians?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 98(3), pages 577-585, June.
    3. Michael Peters & Balázs Szentes, 2012. "Definable and Contractible Contracts," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 80(1), pages 363-411, January.
    4. Hamilton, Jonathan H. & Slutsky, Steven M., 1990. "Endogenous timing in duopoly games: Stackelberg or cournot equilibria," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 2(1), pages 29-46, March.
    5. Chakravorty, Bhaskar & Corchon, Luis C. & Wilkie, Simon, 2006. "Credible implementation," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 57(1), pages 18-36, October.
    6. van Damme, Eric & Hurkens, Sjaak, 1996. "Commitment Robust Equilibria and Endogenous Timing," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 15(2), pages 290-311, August.
    7. Tennenholtz, Moshe, 2004. "Program equilibrium," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 49(2), pages 363-373, November.
    8. Kalai, Adam Tauman & Kalai, Ehud & Lehrer, Ehud & Samet, Dov, 2010. "A commitment folk theorem," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 69(1), pages 127-137, May.
    9. Ashlagi, Itai & Monderer, Dov & Tennenholtz, Moshe, 2009. "Mediators in position auctions," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 67(1), pages 2-21, September.
    10. Drew Fudenberg & Jean Tirole, 1991. "Game Theory," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262061414, December.
    11. Renou, Ludovic, 2009. "Commitment games," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 66(1), pages 488-505, May.
    12. Hart, Sergiu, 1992. "Games in extensive and strategic forms," Handbook of Game Theory with Economic Applications, in: R.J. Aumann & S. Hart (ed.), Handbook of Game Theory with Economic Applications, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 2, pages 19-40, Elsevier.
    13. David M. Kreps & Jose A. Scheinkman, 1983. "Quantity Precommitment and Bertrand Competition Yield Cournot Outcomes," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 14(2), pages 326-337, Autumn.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Halpern, Joe & Heller, Yuval & Winter, Eyal, 2022. "The Benefits of Coarse Preferences," MPRA Paper 111670, University Library of Munich, Germany.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Forges, Françoise, 2013. "A folk theorem for Bayesian games with commitment," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 78(C), pages 64-71.
    2. Dutta, Rohan & Ishii, Ryosuke, 2016. "Dynamic commitment games, efficiency and coordination," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 163(C), pages 699-727.
    3. Grégoire Rota-Graziosi, 2016. "Implementing Tax Coordination and Harmonization through Voluntary Commitment," Working Papers halshs-01332058, HAL.
    4. Rohan Dutta & Ryosuke Ishii, 2013. "Coordinating by Not Committing : Efficiency as the Unique Outcome," Cahiers de recherche 10-2013, Centre interuniversitaire de recherche en économie quantitative, CIREQ.
    5. Françoise Forges & Ulrich Horst & Antoine Salomon, 2016. "Feasibility and individual rationality in two-person Bayesian games," International Journal of Game Theory, Springer;Game Theory Society, vol. 45(1), pages 11-36, March.
    6. James W. Bono & David H. Wolpert, 2009. "Game Mining: How to Make Money from those about to Play a Game," Working Papers 2009-10, American University, Department of Economics.
    7. Peters, Michael & Troncoso-Valverde, Cristián, 2013. "A folk theorem for competing mechanisms," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 148(3), pages 953-973.
    8. Juan I. Block & David K. Levine, 2016. "Codes of conduct, private information and repeated games," International Journal of Game Theory, Springer;Game Theory Society, vol. 45(4), pages 971-984, November.
    9. Gorkem Celik & Michael Peters, 2016. "Reciprocal relationships and mechanism design," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 49(1), pages 374-411, February.
    10. James W. Bono & David H. Wolpert, 2014. "Game Mining: How to Make Money from those about to Play a Game," Advances in Austrian Economics, in: Entangled Political Economy, volume 18, pages 179-211, Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
    11. Karl Wärneryd, 2014. "Observable Strategies, Commitments, and Contracts," CESifo Working Paper Series 5089, CESifo.
    12. García Díaz, Antón & Kujal, Praveen, 1998. "List princing and pure strategy outcomes in a bertrand edgeworth duopoly," UC3M Working papers. Economics 6089, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid. Departamento de Economía.
    13. Amir, Rabah & Stepanova, Anna, 2006. "Second-mover advantage and price leadership in Bertrand duopoly," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 55(1), pages 1-20, April.
    14. Tigran Melkonyan & Surajeet Chakravarty, 2024. "Pre‐play promises, threats and commitments under partial credibility," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 62(1), pages 308-328, January.
    15. García Díaz, Antón & Hernán González, Roberto & Kujal, Praveen, 2009. "List pricing and discounting in a Bertrand-Edgeworth duopoly," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 27(6), pages 719-727, November.
    16. Kempf, Hubert & Rota-Graziosi, Grégoire, 2010. "Endogenizing leadership in tax competition," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 94(9-10), pages 768-776, October.
    17. Attar, Andrea & Campioni, Eloisa & Mariotti, Thomas & Pavan, Alessandro, 2021. "Keeping the Agents in the Dark: Private Disclosures in Competing Mechanisms," TSE Working Papers 21-1227, Toulouse School of Economics (TSE), revised Dec 2023.
    18. Salomon, Antoine & Forges, Françoise, 2015. "Bayesian repeated games and reputation," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 159(PA), pages 70-104.
    19. Andrea Gallice, 2008. "Preempting versus Postponing: the Stealing Game," ICER Working Papers 02-2008, ICER - International Centre for Economic Research.
    20. Miettinen, Topi & Perea, Andrés, 2015. "Commitment in alternating offers bargaining," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 76(C), pages 12-18.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Commitment games; Extensive-form games; Pareto efficiency;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C72 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Noncooperative Games
    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:gamebe:v:105:y:2017:i:c:p:297-315. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/inca/622836 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.