Date of Submission

7-28-2020

Date of Award

7-28-2021

Institute Name (Publisher)

Indian Statistical Institute

Document Type

Doctoral Thesis

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Subject Name

Quantitative Economics

Department

Economics and Planning Unit (EPU-Delhi)

Supervisor

Chowdhury, Prabal Roy (EPU-Delhi; ISI)

Abstract (Summary of the Work)

This thesis consists of three theoretical essays in Microeconomics. The first two essays analyze the properties of a particular class of prize sharing rules groups may employ in a situation of a collective contest with another group, over a private good. The third essay studies a situation of multi-lateral bargaining, where a buyer wants to successfully bargain with multiple sellers, who own an input each, so that he can implement a grand project. The main focus of the thesis is to theorize about and generate hypotheses of the situations summarized above. In the first chapter, we consider a situation of a collective contest between two groups of different sizes and pick for analysis a prize sharing rule groups may employ to share the prize within the group in case of success. The rule being analyzed was introduced in Nitzan (1991) and subsequently became the standard in the collective contests literature. Despite its popularity the rule is ad hoc. In this chapter, we provide a robust strategic basis to these prize sharing rules. In the second chapter once again we deal with the same context as the first chapter, i.e., a collective contest over a private prize between two differently sized groups. We analyze in depth the prize sharing rules introduced in Nitzan (1991). We posit a restriction on the rule which can be interpreted as a group specific norm of competitiveness. We then go on to analyze how the posited social norms affect the outcomes of the contest. In particular, we analyze how these social norms affect the welfare of the groups participating in the contest. In the third chapter we consider a situation of multi-lateral bargaining between a buyer and multiple sellers, who own and input each. The buyer needs to successfully bargain with multiple sellers in order to implement a project. We embed the sellers in a graph and study how the underlying structure of the graph, which determines the locations of the sellers, affects the outcomes of the ensuing bargaining game. Specifically, we show how the presence of indispensable sellers turns out to be crucial to the way the surplus is divided in equilibrium. In the following sections we take up one chapter at a time and provide a brief description outlining the research questions, the theoretical approach taken and the main findings.

Comments

ProQuest Collection ID: http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?url_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:dissertation&res_dat=xri:pqm&rft_dat=xri:pqdiss:28842756

Control Number

ISILib-TH503

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

DOI

http://dspace.isical.ac.in:8080/jspui/handle/10263/2146

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