Signaling Design https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2502.02328&r=&r=des
"… in the unique equilibrium in our setting, a profit-seeking monopolist school offers an uninformative #signaling technology, generating the same signal regardless of effort, and capture all the surplus in terms of fees. In this case, the separating equilibrium envisaged in #Spence (1973) vanishes, and no wasteful effort is exerted! Competition among schools affects both the total surplus produced and its distribution: competition in fees allows students to retain a higher share of the total surplus … competition to attract high types induces schools to offer more informative monitoring policies, incentivizing higher levels of wasteful effort.

… one equilibrium outcome stands out for its robustness: full separation, yielding the Riley outcome—low-type students exert no effort and high-type students exert the lowest effort that low-types are unwilling to emulate. Thus, compared to the #monopoly case, #competition shifts surplus from the school to high-type students and entails efficiency losses due to socially wasteful effort in equilibrium. The critical driver of this result is the high-type students’ willingness to pay to access a monitoring policy that enables them to better distinguish themselves from low-type students and thus obtain higher #wages."
#GameTheory

Ontario sets 25% surcharge on US energy exports to counter #Trump #tariffs - https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/mar/10/ontario-canada-trump-tariffs "Premier Doug Ford says province ‘won’t back down’ until US president retracts duties on Canada" everyone must do the same #gametheory

Idea of #karlmarx s alienation or weber s objection to his very definition of class and www
If someone works in #google can they end up buying their own #alphabet product one day
But the means of production here can be free , thanks to open source , but can they be?
I mean server cost is never free , #labor isnt free of cost , tax cuts re not free, nor is marketing and lawsuits
But #bigtech folks dont go through alienation
Why , because they share political control ( ie bargain position ) , which can be different from ownership , while the latter , including the value, which they can influence of their stock holding is reduced in that accord and they end up being better off than their peers in #academia or #foss as bigtech is now big enough to influence policy making for that
The dictated aspect of #gametheory .
Afaik weber didnt highlight the rich gets richer or big gets bigger part

the very assumption that people need be selfish for optimal results beats the argument #taxtherich
#gametheory equilibrium #economics
#strategy can't be individualistic , a game needs > 1 player
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HezHJKZ47Ck

The Axelrod library is 10 years old.

If I'd had time to see that coming I'd have written down some thoughts about it all. Here are two simple thoughts:

For a library that started as a demo project at @PyConNA, it's ended up being a huge part of my research and teaching.

I've also learnt so much from the amazing co-maintainers of the project who have become friends.

https://axelrod.readthedocs.io

'Sup, everyone!

Any suggestions of resources for studying simulation, in a broad sense?

Is game theory and complex systems useful for developing cooler simulations or studying them would be overhead?

Where can I start learning about tactics and strategy?

I was thinking about voting systems earlier: has there been research into a system where the probability of a decision being made is a monotonic function of its votes?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Random_ballot is just this but with the function being the identity, but I wonder if others have been explored.

Recent discussions about hypothetical D&D economies led me to look into Roman currency. Here is a great wikipedia image of the common currency in the 27 BC - 100 AD Roman era.

So instead of copper, silver, electrum gold (the D&D standard), the early Roman Empire used various iterations of Bronze, Orichalcum, Silver, Billon, and Gold.

And today I learned Billon is the name for an alloy of silver and gold, or silver and copper, or silver and gold and copper, or basically any alloy of silver and some base metal.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_currency#Imperial_period:_27_BC_%E2%80%93_AD_476

Deep Q-learning of prices in oligopolies: the number of competitors matters
https://www.sfb1283.uni-bielefeld.de/preprints/sfb24074.pdf
"…whereas in a duopoly setting DQNs might lead to prices very close to the monopoly level, the supra-competitive #pricing resulting from the interaction of these algorithms quickly vanishes as the number of firms increases. In particular, markets with at least five competitors robustly yield prices close to the Nash equilibrium level. These findings are robust concerning changes in the key parameters of the algorithm."

The result reminded me very much of this 20+ year-old #experimentalEconomics paper:
"Two are few and four are many: number effects in experimental oligopolies"
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jebo.2002.10.002 or https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/78422/1/bgse12_2001.pdf
…and they cited it, too!

Credit to @capita_picat

for pointing out this article about how Gold was not the usual currency used in medieval times.

https://acoup.blog/2025/01/03/collections-coinage-and-the-tyranny-of-fantasy-gold/

I like looking at real world analogues to help inform making the "physics, economic engine" for rpgs.

A lot of issues in rpgs come down to how well do we want to emulate something from the real world like; falling damage, combat injuries, or should the economy use silver pieces.

Versus the thought of, are we playing a "game" and the rules should be more gamey in nature. Usually because going too far down the emulation path becomes a slog.

This video is fascinating!
Talking about Game Theory, Prisoner's Dilemma and how co-operation emerges.

It's super interesting that nasty strategems do not work over time and that looking out for number one can also create co-operation.

https://odysee.com/@veritasium:f/what-the-prisoner's-dilemma-reveals:a

Personal opinion. The 1e, 2e, 3e DMGs do not do a good job of cluing in a DM on what a DM is going to do a lot of (which is adjudicate situations, from the mundane to the completely gonzo off the wall ideas players will come up with)

Gary Gygax writes in 1E about it, but it is on page 110. You had to read 109 pages before you got this bit of wisdom (Image 1)

David "Zeb" Cook might have written about it in 2E. There is some hint of it on page 38 (first print) but it deals with the optional non-weapon proficiences. (Image 2)

Not sure who wrote the 3E verbiage (Image 3), but it really hits the wrong tone for how I like to think about running the game. But at least it is on page 9.

In my opinion, adjudicating should be the 1st or 2nd thing the DMG goes over. And the DMG should provide copious amounts of advice on how hard the job is, and throw in some easy to use modifiers and ideas about how to mechanically adjudicate things.

I think STAR FRONTIERS released in 1980 does a much better job of giving a simple to understand mechanic that can be used to adjudicate most situations. (Image 4).

Rob Urie: Update on US Missiles, Ukraine, and Russian Response
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2024/11/rob-urie-update-on-us-missiles-ukraine-and-russian-response.html
#gametheory

I recently read a paper by Kleshnina and others and used it to teach myself some evolutionary game theory techniques.

This is a little obscure, so I'll thread below about why this topic matters for humans and the environment

https://nadiah.org/2024/11/20/kleshnina_2023