Kirchsteiger, G. and Prat, Andrea (1999) Common agency and computational complexity: theory and experimental evidence. 36. Center for Economic Research, Tilburg University, Tilburg, The Netherlands.
Full text not available from this repository.Abstract
In a common agency game, several principals try to in°uence the behavior of an agent. Common agency games typically have multiple equilibria. One class of equilibria, called truthful, has been identi¯ed by Bernheim and Whinston and has found widespread use in the political economy literature. In this paper we identify another class of equilibria, which we call natural. In a natural equilibrium, each principal o®ers a strictly positive contribution on at most one alternative. We show that a natural equilibrium always exists and that its computational complexity is much smaller than that of a truthful equilibrium. To compare the predictive power of the two concepts, we run an experiment on a common agency game for which the two equilibria predict a di®erent equilibrium alternative. The results strongly reject the truthful equilibrium. The alternative predicted by the natural equilibrium is chosen in 65% of the matches, while the one predicted by the truthful equilibrium is chosen in less than 5% of the matches.
| Item Type: | Monograph (Discussion Paper) |
|---|---|
| Official URL: | http://center.uvt.nl |
| Additional Information: | © 1999 the authors |
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | lobbying, experimental economics, common agency, truthful equilibrium, natural equilibrium, computational complexity. |
| Library of Congress subject classification: | H Social Sciences > HB Economic Theory |
| Sets: | Collections > Economists Online Departments > Economics Research centres and groups > Suntory and Toyota International Centres for Economics and Related Disciplines (STICERD) |
| Rights: | http://www.lse.ac.uk/library/rights/LSERO.htm |
| Identification Number: | 36 |
| URL: | http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/5235/ |
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