Overview

This seminar will study coordination games. These are a class of games that provide insights into a variety of phenomena in both microeconomics and macroeconomics. In these games, the interactions of agents (households, firms, governments) can give rise to socially undesirable outcomes though each participant is acting in his or her best interest. The course will start with an abstract presentation of these games and then proceed to study a wide variety of applications.

There will be an overview lecture, lasting 1 hour, at the start of the block. There will be subsequently be three longer, 3 hour, meetings on the applications.



 

Readings:

A book that I published some years ago entitled Coordination Games: Complementarities and Macroeconomics, Cambridge University Press, 1999, will provide the basic structure for the course.  Additional readings will be posted on the Brightspace course web page.

Requirements:

There are two requirements.  First, participants will present a paper in a topic area of their choosing. Second, participants will write a 5 page version of a summer report on the topic of coordination games.
 
Course Outline

Here is a list of the potential topics for the course. I will give lecture 1. You will sign up to present a paper on one of the topics listed. We will meet to consult about the literature and the topic in the weeks after the first lecture.  I will post specific readings on the course web page in the weeks before a topic is covered.

Lecture 1: Overview of Coordination Games

 Topic 5: Aggregate Demand Linkages