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This paper provides a general framework for analysing rational learning in strategic situations in which the players have private priors and private information. The author analyses the behaviour of Bayesian rational players both in a repeated game and in a recurrent game when they are uncertain about opponents' behaviour and the game they are playing. The aim of the paper is to explain how Bayesian rational agents learn by playing and to characterize the outcome of this learning process. By studying the concept of 'conjectural equilibrium' and analysing the process of convergence of players' behaviour, the roles played by the notions of merging and of consistency are demonstrated.

This paper generalizes the classical existence results for games with discontinuous payoffs, developed by Dasgupta and Maskin in 1986. This new existence result is then applied to a simple duopoly model with quantity precommitment and Bertrand competition.

There are two main categories of counterterrorism policies: proactive and defensive measures. Proactive policies directly target terrorists and, by weakening their ability, share public good features. Defensive measures, on the other hand, seek to protect a potential target. Unilateral defensive measures may induce terrorists to replace one target with another, possibly a foreign one, as confirmed by the succession of terrorist attacks in the European Union over the last 20 years. We analyse different institutional frameworks to determine the best one for interstate cooperation considering the externationalites of various counterterrorism measures. This article highlights the combined effect of voter propensity towards defensive policies, certain intelligence policies and different institutional scenarios on the (in)efficient strategic choice of counterterrorism defensive policies in democratic countries, where efficiency means maximising the joint welfare of countries. We consider four different institutional scenarios: decentralisation, intelligence cooperation, unanimous political cooperation and full political union. We model these situations as a three-stage signalling game and show that, surprisingly, intelligence cooperation increases the probability of efficient defensive policies more than unanimous political cooperation.

In this paper, we study the evolution of accountability in autocracies and the consequent progressive economic and political mismanagement in terms of information changes. It is often held to be true that better information means greater accountability. On the contrary, we show that in dictatorships, better information might imply worse choices by a dictator. The basic idea is that the reputation mechanism underlying accountability only works if there is enough noise surrounding the dictator's possible type. As the selectorate's information about the dictator's actual type increases over time, the incentives for the dictator to behave correctly vanish.

In this paper, we study the evolution of accountability in autocracies and the consequent progressive economic and political mismanagement in terms of information changes. It is often held to be true that better information means greater accountability. On the contrary, we show that in dictatorships, better information might imply worse choices by a dictator. The basic idea is that the reputation mechanism underlying accountability only works if there is enough noise surrounding the dictator's possible type. As the selectorate's information about the dictator's actual type increases over time, the incentives for the dictator to behave correctly vanish.

We investigate regulation as the outcome of a bargaining process between a regulator and a regulated firm. The regulator is required to monitor the firm's costs and reveal its information to a political principal (Congress). In this setting, we explore the scope for collusion between the regulator and the firm, which results in the manipulation of the regulator's report on the firm's costs to Congress. The firm's bene.t of collusion arises from the higher price the efficient firm is allowed to charge when the regulator reports that it is inefficient. However, a higher price reduces the gains from trade the parties can share in the bargaining process. As a result of this trade-off, the efficient firm has a stake in collusion only if the regulator's bargaining power in the regulatory relationship is relatively high. Then, we derive the optimal institutional response to collusion and characterize the conditions under which allowing collusion is desirable.