Behavioral Game Theory

Tomorrow the government will trigger Article 50 and start the formal process of getting the UK out of the EU. So, how did we get in this mess in the first place? I think the Condorcet Paradox provides an interesting angle on the problem. In particular, I want to look at preferences for Remain versus Soft Brexit, i.e. leave the EU but still remain in the single market or other collaborations centered on the EU, and Hard Brexit, i.e. walk completely away from the EU.            The one thing we know for sure is that in the referendum last June around 52% of people voted Leave and 48% voted Remain. What does that tell us? In my recollection the referendum campaign primarily focused on the question of Soft Brexit versus Remain. No doubt some would disagree with that. But things like the customs union only started being talked about after the vote. Instead we heard a lot during the campaign about the Norway or Swiss model of Soft Brexit. True the Leave camp made promises like 'take b

In a paper , recently published in the International Journal of Game Theory , my wife and I analyze a game called a forced contribution threshold public good game. A nice way to illustrate the game is to look at the difficulties of getting rid of an incompetent manager.          So, consider a department with n workers who all want to get rid of the manager. If they don't get rid of him then there payoff will be L. If they do get rid of him then there payoff will be H > L. But, how to get rid of him? He will only be removed if at least t or more of the workers complain to senior management. For instance, if a majority of staff need to complain then t = n/2.         If t or more complain then the manager is removed and everyone is happy. The crucial thing, though, is what happens if less than t complain. In this case the manager will remain and any workers that did complain will face recrimination. To be specific suppose that the cost of recrimination is C. Then potential payo