Marek M Kaminski

I introduce axiomatically infinite sequential games that extend Kuhn's classical framework. Infinite games allow for (a) imperfect information, (b) an infinite horizon, and (c) infinite action sets. A generalized backward induction (GBI) procedure is defined for all such games over the roots of subgames. A strategy profile that survives backward pruning is called a backward induction solution (BIS). The main result of this paper finds that, similar to finite games of perfect information, the sets of BIS and subgame perfect equilibria (SPE) coincide for both pure strategies and for behavioral strategies that satisfy the conditions of finite support and finite crossing. Additionally, I discuss five examples of well-known games and political economy models that can be solved with GBI but not classic backward induction (BI). The contributions of this paper include (a) the axiomatization of a class of infinite games, (b) the extension of backward induction to infinite games, and (c) the proof that BIS and SPEs are identical for infinite games.

A new inmate, or `rookie', who enters a total institution usually faces `tests' and `games' organized by the 'old crew'. I argue that such initiation rituals are often designed by inmates in order to uncover a rookie's personal characteristics, such as toughness and cleverness. While such rituals may seem violent, they usually involve more skillful deception and tricks than pain and suffering. The basic idea is to persuade the rookie that he or she faces some tough choices and watch his or her reaction to adverse or unusual circumstances. The mock character of a typical test creates a fundamental problem for its validity since an informed rookie can simulate both toughness and cleverness. Thus, an informed rookie cannot be distinguished from one with the desired characteristics. This problem is well recognized by most knowledgeable inmates and motivates them to search for new games and tests. The result is a wide variety of competing tests, frequent changes of argot and the secret code of behavior. The initiation rituals are modeled as simple games and decision problems. The ethnographic material was collected by the author as a political prisoner in Poland in 1985.

The article examines the decision-making components of Jane Austen's six major novels as reconstructed in Michael Chwe's book and his argument that Austen was a precursor of game theory. In her novels, Austen describes an abundance of strategic situations in the mating process within the British higher classes. Social constraints made mating within this world a tough game due to harsh punishments for failure, especially for women, and a severe limitation on signaling interest or sympathy. Austen cleverly investigates this environment and reconstructs many aspects of strategic behavior that have their counterparts in formal concepts of game and decision theory. While she hasn't made contributions to theory per se, she deserves being named a precursor of applied strategic thinking and an expert on a particular strategically sophisticated social environment.

ANALIZA KSIĄŻKI MICHAELA CHWE "JANE AUSTEN, GAME THEORIST" Streszczenie: Artykuł analizuje rekonstrukcję procesów podejmowania decy-zji w sześciu powieściach Jane Austen dokonaną przez Michaela Chwe oraz tezę, że Austen była prekursorem teorii gier. Austen przedstawia sytuacje strategiczne towarzyszące szukaniu partnera w świecie arystokracji brytyjskiej. Restrykcje społeczne skomplikowały ten proces ze względu na duże koszty porażki, szczególnie dla kobiet, oraz duże ograniczenia komunikacyjne. Inteligentna analiza Austen opisuje wiele aspektów strategicznych decyzji mających odpowiedniki w formalnych pojęciach teorii gier i decyzji. Austen nie wniosła wkładu ściśle teoretycznego, jednak w pełni zasługuje na tytuł prekursora stosowanej teorii.

After atrocities, disappearances, and other human rights violations, the dictatorship in Authoritania falls, and a new democratic regime takes power, changing the country's name to Freedonia. How should Freedonia deal with Authoritania's rulers and their agents? Do they have options between forgiveness and full-scale retribution? Should agents of the past regime be allowed political rights? Should victims be compensated, and should confiscated property be restored? What role does the international community have? These kinds of dilemmas constitute the field of transitional justice.

The problem of distributing a single homogeneous divisible good among a variable set of agents, or the ‘rationing problem,’ is analyzed. Examples of rationing include bankruptcy, taxation, claims settlement, cost allocation, surplus sharing, and social choice problems. Agents are described by their personal characteristics, or types. A type may be an agent’s utility function, preference ordering, claim to an estate,

... Despite the high stakes and top priority given to electoral design by political players, their ... a seat-maximizing electoral law may have been unrelated to their failure (or success) at manipulation ... adopted to define `rationality' within a specific model, such as whether a strategy ...

... A massive move towards coalitional stability took place in Poland between 1993 and 1997, and ... electoral aw remained unchanged; the politi-cal outcome of the 1997 election was strikingly ... After the 1993 post-communist victory, the consolidation of the Right parties brought a ...

I consider a model of multiple winner elections with several types of spoilers.  In single-office elections, a “classic” spoiler turns a winner into a non-winner and a non-winner into a winner.  Such spoilers rarely appear in multi-office elections.  In such elections, spoilers include a “Kingmaker”, who turns a non-winner into a winner; a “Kingslayer”, who turns a winner into a non-winner; a “Valuegobbler”, who subtracts from some competitor more seats than it receives; and “Selfspoilers”, who may be hurt by competing separately rather than creating an electoral coalition. Various strategic spoilers, such as fake parties, are possible as well.  I look for spoilers in eight Polish parliamentary elections that have taken place since the fall of communism in 1989.  In two elections, the consequences of spoilers were massive.  In 1993, multiple spoilers on the right helped the two post-communist parties return to power, slow down decommunization and create strong institutional obstacles to further democratization.  In 2015, a spoiler manufactured a majority for the largest party (PiS) and, as a consequence, enabled PiS quickly to implement radical reforms.  In other elections, spoilers had smaller, but noticeable consequences.  The results suggest that parliamentary elections using PR party-list systems are vulnerable to spoiler problems that may cause significant political effects.

W artykule dokonano analizy wyborów w okręgach wielomandatowych z różnymi typami spoilerów. W wyborach jednomandatowych „klasyczny” spoiler wchodzący do wyborów zamienia zwycięzcę w przegrywającego i jednocześnie jednego z pokonanych w zwycięzcę. Podobne sytuacje rzadko mają miejsce w wyborach wielomandatowych. W takich wyborach istnieją bardziej subtelne efekty przypominające działanie klasycznego spoilera. „Królotwórca”
zamienia kandydata niebędącego faktycznym zwycięzcą w zwycięzcę wyborów; „Królobójca” pozbawia zwycięstwa uprzednio wygrywającego wybory; „Szkodnik” zabiera pewnemu konkurentowi więcej mandatów, niż sam zdobywa; „Autospoilery” tracą mandaty, startując w wyborach samodzielnie raczej niż tworząc koalicję. Możliwe są też różne warianty spoilerów strategicznych, takich jak fikcyjne partie. W artykule przeprowadzono analizę ośmiu wyborów parlamentarnych, które miały miejsce w Polsce po roku 1989. W dwóch przypadkach konsekwencje istnienia spoilerów były bardzo duże. W 1993 roku rozproszenie na prawicy (Autospoilery) pomogło SLD i PSL wrócić do władzy, spowolniło proces dekomunizacji i stworzyło silne przeszkody instytucjonalne na drodze do dalszej demokratyzacji. W roku 2015 mały Królotwórca, partia Razem, pomógł PiS osiągnąć większość parlamentarną i umożliwił realizację radykalnego programu zmian. W pozostałych wyborach konsekwencje były mniejsze, lecz również godne odnotowania. Wyniki sugerują, że wybory parlamentarne przeprowadzane przy użyciu ordynacji proporcjonalnej z listami kandydatów są bardzo wrażliwe na działanie spoilerów.

Prison socializes an inmate to hyper-calculative behavior. It teaches him patience in planning and pursuing his goals, punishes him severely for his mistakes and rewards him generously for smart action. No wonder that inmates are such ardent optimizers. A clever move can shorten one’s sentence, save one from rape or a beating, keep one’s spirit high, or increase one’s access to resources. There is little space for innocent and spontaneous expressions of emotion when they collide with fundamental interests. Brutal fights, selfinjury, and rapes can all be explained as outcomes of carefully calculated actions. Paradoxically, much of the confusion in interpreting prison behavior arises from both a failure to understand the motives of inmates and an unwillingness to admit that outcomes judged as inhuman or bizarre may be consequences of individually rational action. The main message of the book is that prisoners optimize under the constraints of their harsh life conditions and the local subculture. Their behavior reflects their attempts at optimization. Such ‘rational choice’ approach helps us to understand prison behavior better.

Contents
1. Marek M. Kaminski – Introduction: The seductive power of Mancur Olson” . . . . . . . 7
2. Jongseok An – Remembering Professor Mancur Olson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
3. Keith L. Dougherty – Memories of Mancur: A student reminisces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
4. Jac C. Heckelman – My remembrances of Mancur . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
5. Martin C. McGuire – Remembering Mancur Olson: And Auld Lang Syne . . . . . . . . 29
6. Peter Murrell – Mancur Olson: Personal recollections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
7. Billin Neyapti – Mancur Olson: A memorable Professor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
8. Thomas C. Schelling – In Memoriam . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
9. Piotr Swistak – The deeds of Mancur Olson: A ride from Palmer House
and a meeting in LeFrak Hall. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
Articles on “Collective Action”
10. Leszek Balcerowicz – On the economics and the political economy of reforms . . . 67
11. Marek M. Kaminski – Schelling games, Kuran dominos and electoral coalitions.
Non-standard game-theoretic models of collective action . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
12. Marianna Klochko – The endogeneity of time preference and analysis
of collective behavior. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
13. Martin C. McGuire – Investment in public capital, distribution,
and governance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123
14. Peter Ordeshook – Mancur Olson, collective action and the design
of a federal state: The case of Ukraine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155
15. Carole J. Uhlaner – Relational goods and overcoming barriers
to collective action . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171
16. Richard J. Zeckhauser – Mancur Olson and the tragedy
of the unbalanced commons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191
Contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203
Author Guidelines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205