S. Nageeb Ali Publications

We study sequential bargaining between a proposer and a veto player. Both have single‐peaked preferences, but the proposer is uncertain about the veto player's ideal point. The proposer cannot commit to future proposals. When players are patient, there can be equilibria with Coasian dynamics: the veto player's private information can largely nullify proposer's bargaining power. Our main result, however, is that under some conditions there also are equilibria in which the proposer obtains the high payoff that he would with commitment power. The driving force is that the veto player's single‐peaked preferences give the proposer an option to “leapfrog,” that is, to secure agreement from only low‐surplus types early on to credibly extract surplus from high types later. Methodologically, we exploit the connection between sequential bargaining and static mechanism design.

This paper studies a simple model of observational learning where agents care not only about the information of others but also about their actions. We show that despite complex strategic considerations that arise from forward-looking incentives, herd behavior can arise in equilibrium. The model encompasses applications such as sequential elections, public good contributions, and leadership charitable giving.

This resurgence of interest in Condorcet’s approach was sparked by a key observation of David Austen-Smith and Jeffrey Banks (1996) that “naive” voting is generally not a Nash equilibrium of the voting game. That is, the optimal way to vote in a multiperson committee is not usually the same as the optimal way to vote in a committee of one, an issue overlooked by Condorcet and other nongame-theoretic analyses of his model. In fact, a voter’s strategic incentives generally depend on all the variables of the model: the size of the committee, the voting rule and procedure, the information structure, preferences, and so forth. Because such a simple model offers rich insights into the strategic considerations faced by voters, the CJM has played a prominent role in enhancing our understanding of voting mechanisms.