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Most nuclear dyads are characterized by some degree of nuclear and conventional asymmetry. This paper argues that these asymmetries create an environment in which deliberate nuclear first use (DNFU) can be rational. This possibility has been discarded in the formal literature on nuclear escalation because of the common reliance on the assumption of mutually assured destruction (MAD). This paper develops a formal model that traces how and under what circumstances two types of DNFU are rational. First, nuclear imbalances and advancements in counterforce technologies create a damage limitation incentive for a strong actor. Second, conventional asymmetry creates an incentive for the coercive use of nuclear weapons by the weaker player. Moreover, this paper illustrates that these asymmetric conditions are a relevant characteristic in important and very different nuclear dyads: DPRK–US, Pakistan–India, and Russia–US. Thus, the model demonstrates the potential core drivers of DNFU in today's nuclear landscape. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: This paper gives a model of collusion formation and a method of measuring the degree of it among the traders/bidders in the agricultural commodity markets in India. The important assumption is that the bidding is repetitive with a set of common bidders. The theory has been derived based on the behavior of the wholesale market of agricultural commodities in India. The paper is based on full information in the collusion formation. The paper first derives the theoretical structure of the bidders' behavior and thereafter derives a measure of collusion formation with the help of real-life data. Design/methodology/approach: The paper used the standard theory of optimization and the theory of auction and probability statistics. Findings: This is a complete information model of cartel formation. The bidding is repetitive and continues forever in discrete time. Hence bidders behavior is observable. Using the proposed method, if the APMC measures for each market and publishes on a periodic basis, say weekly basis, then it will be easier to break the collusion in the market where relative collision is present. For example, if a farmer has three options to sell in three different markets, then the published data would help them to select the market where the degree of collusion is relatively lower. Moreover, the undesirable loss can be avoided based on the right choice of market. As a result, transaction costs will be optima. Originality/value: The paper first derives the theoretical structure of the bidders' behavior and thereafter derives a measure of collusion formation with the help of real-life data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The interactions of motorised vehicles with pedestrians have always been a concern in traffic safety. The major threat to pedestrians comes from the high level of interactions imposed in uncontrolled traffic environments, where road users have to compete over the right of way. In the absence of traffic management and control systems in such traffic environments, road users have to negotiate the right of way while avoiding conflict. Furthermore, the high level of movement freedom and agility of pedestrians, as one of the interactive parties, can lead to exposing unpredictable behaviour on the road. Traffic interactions in uncontrolled mixed traffic environments will become more challenging by fully/partially automated driving systems' deployment, where the intentions and decisions of interacting agents must be predicted/detected to avoid conflict and improve traffic safety and efficiency. This study aims to formulate a game-theoretic approach to model pedestrian interactions with passenger cars and light vehicles (two-wheel and three-wheel vehicles) in uncontrolled traffic settings. The proposed models employ the most influencing factors in the road user's decision and choice of strategy to predict their movements and conflict resolution strategies in traffic interactions. The models are applied to two data sets of video recordings collected in a shared space in Hamburg and a mid-block crossing area in Surat, India, including the interactions of pedestrians with passenger cars and light vehicles, respectively. The models are calibrated using the identified conflicts between users and their conflict resolution strategies in the data sets. The proposed models indicate satisfactory performances considering the stochastic behaviour of road users - particularly in the mid-block crossing area in India - and have the potential to be used as a behavioural model for automated driving systems., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2024 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.)

Predatory pricing has been a concern since the inception of competition policy. Scholars from different schools have large disagreements about it, with some arguing that predation does not exist to others considering it a legitimate threat to competition. As predatory pricing theory is largely concerned with price cost test, the issue is further complicated while looking at two sided platforms. Due to network effects, the value of the platform for the users changes with the number of users on the network. Therefore, the price of services is influenced by multiplicity of factors rather than just the cost of the service. The aim of the paper is to note such economic theory and apply this in the Indian jurisprudence on predatory pricing. Part I of the paper provides a non-technical introduction to the economics of two-sided platforms. It explains the rationale behind below cost pricing and critiques the usage of a price cost test for determining predation in case of two-sided platforms. Part II touches on the international regulation of predatory pricing and establishes the context for the Indian jurisprudence. Part III discusses the Indian jurisprudence surrounding predatory pricing. This elaborates on the legislative history and the judicial decisions concerning predatory pricing and platform competition in India. This part argues that the Indian jurisprudence has completely disregarded the economic theory of predation in case of two-sided platforms and the adjudications are merely based on a price cost test. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the intricate web of South Asia's security dynamics, India and Pakistan's relationship holds the key to equilibrium. Geographical proximity demands swift responses, prompting India's strategic shift towards Counterforce targeting. Official declarations and military posturing attest to India's resolute commitment to recalibrate its deterrence doctrine. This study critically examines the origins of India's Counterforce targeting strategy, drawing from existing literature and employing theoretical frameworks, including posture optimization, escalation ladder, superiority-brinkmanship, mathematical game theory, rational choice theory, and nuclear deterrence. These models collectively contribute to understanding the implications of India's pursuit of nuclear superiority for coercive diplomacy with Pakistan. Beyond enriching the understanding of South Asia's security, this research unravels the interplay between evolving nuclear strategies, the fluid dynamics of deterrence, and nuanced geopolitical ambitions. By deciphering India's counterforce targeting approach, this study fosters a nuanced discourse on South Asian strategic stability, offering insight into the pivotal role of nuclear deterrence in shaping the region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The long-term evolution of multi agent multi criteria decision making (MCDM) and to obtain sustainable decision a novel methodology is proposed based on evolutionary game theory. In this paper multi agent MCDM is represented as an evolutionary game and the evolutionary strategies are defined as sustainable decisions. Here we consider the problem of decision making in Indian Tea Industry. The agents in this game are essentially Indian Tea Estate owner and Indian Tea board. The replicator dynamics of the evolutionary game are studied to obtain evolutionary strategies which could be defined as sustainable strategies. The multi agent MCDM in Indian Tea Industry is considered under different socio-political and Corporate Social Responsibility scenario and groups of Indian Tea Industry. Again, the impacts of imprecision and market volatility on the outcome of some strategies (decisions) are studied. In this paper the imprecision on the impact of the strategies are modelled as fuzzy numbers whereas the market volatility is taken into account as white noise. Hence the MCDM problem for Indian Tea Industry is modelled as a hybrid evolutionary game. The probabilities of strategies are obtained by solving hybrid evolutionary game and could be represented as a Dempster-Shafer belief structure. The simulation results facilitate the Decision Makers to choose the strategies (decisions) under different type of uncertainty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the outcomes of the cases resolved under Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code of India to examine the treatment of admitted claims for the two main classes of creditors i.e. operational and financial creditors. It shows that, at an aggregate level, operational creditors and financial creditors realize an equal percentage of their claims. However, at an individual level, there is wide heterogeneity in the treatment of the two classes of creditors. Three benchmark division rules – Proportional division, Constrained Equal Losses and Constrained Equal Awards, are used to characterize the actual divisions in each case. This analysis allows us to hypothesize that when aggregate claims of operational creditors are tiny, the Constrained Equal Awards (that is extremely generous to small creditors), does well. When aggregate claims of operational creditors are large, the Proportional rule does well. But when the claims of operational creditors fall in an intermediate range, the Constrained Equal Losses rule which is most unfavourable to the operational creditor comes to the fore. Hence, some broad guidelines that can be applied on a case by case basis appear to be desirable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a popular belief that drug launch is delayed in developing countries like India because of delayed transfer of technology due to a 'post-launch' imitation threat through weak intellectual property rights (IPR). In fact, this belief has been a major reason for the imposition of the Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights regime under the WTO. This construct undermines the fact that in countries like India, with high reverse engineering capabilities, imitation can occur even before the formal technology transfer, and fails to recognize the first mover advantage in pharmaceutical markets. This paper argues that the first mover advantage is important and will vary across therapeutic areas, especially in developing countries with diverse levels of patient enlightenment and quality awareness. We construct a game theoretic model of incomplete information to examine the delay in drug launch in terms of costs and benefits of first move, assumed to be primarily a function of the therapeutic area of the new drug. Our model shows that drug launch will be delayed only for external (infective/communicable) diseases, while drugs for internal, non-communicable diseases (accounting for the overwhelming majority of new drug discovery) will be launched without delay.

This paper deals with an economic aspect of distributed generation systems which rural energy cooperatives may mainly support, since they can effectively coordinate the different stakeholders within an energy access initiative. Members of a rural energy cooperative would share the costs of deploying a distributed generation system, so that each of them can benefit from it. To minimise the overall investment cost, such a cooperative must consider both technical sizing and cost allocation among its members. For the latter, an important issue to take into account is the so-called willingness-to-pay. For obtaining the design of the distributed generation system we propose to use facility location covering (FALCO) models. The solution of the FALCO model provides both the structure of the distributed generation system and the investment cost to be covered by the members of the cooperative. We take advantage of the structure of the primal and dual optimal solutions of the FALCO model to endogenously determine the minimum and maximum willingness-to-pay of the cooperative members and then to apply rationing techniques to obtain the final allocation of costs to each member. Thus, our approach optimises the generator locations and minimises the total system cost, while assigning to each member at least her minimum willingness-to-pay. From our point of view, this method may help the beneficiaries to accept the investment cost allocation. Finally, a case study based on real data from a rural village in Maharashtra, where a group of farmers wanting to buy and share an energy system to pump water for irrigating their fields, is used to illustrate the working of the proposed cost allocation methodology. • Fair cost allocation methods and game theory can support distributed generation planning. • Each user minimum willingness-to-pay serves as reference for defining fair shares. • Technical and topographical conditions are critical for both system sizing and cost allocation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The China-India border is the longest disputed border in the world. The countries went to war in 1962 and there have been recurring border skirmishes ever since. Reports of Chinese incursions into Indian territory are now a frequent occurrence. This rising tension between the world's most populous countries not only poses risks for global security and the world economy, but also has a negative impact on the unique ecology of the Himalayas, because of the expanding military infrastructure. We have assembled a unique data set of the dates and locations of the major incursions over the past 15 years. We find that the conflict can be separated into two independent conflicts, the western and eastern sectors. The incursions in these sectors are statistically independent. However, major incidents do lead to an increased tension that persists for years all along the entire Line of Actual Control (LAC). This leads us to conclude that an agreement on the exact location of a limited number of contested regions, such as the Doklam plateau on the China-Bhutan border, has the potential to significantly defuse the conflict, and could potentially settle the dispute at a further date. Building on insights from game theory, we find that the Chinese incursions in the west are strategically planned and may aim for a more permanent control over specific contested areas. This finding is in agreement with other studies into the expansionist strategy of the current Chinese government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we use simulation to analyze how flight routing network structure may change in different world regions, and how this might impact future traffic growth and emissions. We compare models of the domestic Indian and US air transportation systems, representing developing and mature air transportation systems respectively. We explicitly model passenger and airline decision-making, capturing passenger demand effects and airline operational responses, including airline network change. The models are applied to simulate air transportation system growth for networks of 49 airports in each country from 2005 to 2050. In India, the percentage of connecting passengers simulated decreases significantly (from over 40% in 2005 to under 10% in 2050), indicating that a shift in network structure towards increased point-to-point routing can be expected. In contrast, very little network change is simulated for the US airport set modeled. The simulated impact of network change on system CO 2 emissions is very small, although in the case of India it could enable a large increase in demand, and therefore a significant reduction in emissions per passenger (by nearly 25%). NO x emissions at major hub airports are also estimated, and could initially reduce relative to a case in which network change is not simulated (by nearly 25% in the case of Mumbai in 2025). This effect, however, is significantly reduced by 2050 because of frequency competition effects. We conclude that network effects are important when estimating CO 2 emissions per passenger and local air quality effects at hub airports in developing air transportation systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article analyzes the undefined status of efficacy under Section 3(d) of the Indian Patents Act of 1970 from the law and economics perspective of the pharmaceutical industry in India. It states that undefined status of the concept has social welfare implications in the pharmaceutical patents such as arbitrariness, legal uncertainty and corruption, and misapplication. It also calls for a reform in the patent legislation not only in the country but also globally.

This paper explores the Kamasutra (circa 3rd century CE), an ancient South Asian treatise on erotic love, written by Vatsyayana, also known as "the Indian Machiavelli of Love", from the perspectives of secrets and strategy-making. It introduces five jointly necessary conditions that should be satisfied for a piece of information to count as a secret and then argues that Vatsyayana's world abounds in secrets. It further argues that Vatsyayana's actors are strategically oriented in the game-theoretic sense. It then analyzes two simultaneous move games constructed from the text of the Kamasutra dealing with mutual agreements among women of royal harems for secretly smuggling in men-about-town and quarrels between intimate lovers when infidelity of one of them is revealed. We argue that in both cases Vatsyayana's insights correspond to the pure strategy equilibria of these games. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Soil erosion causes significant damage to humans by reducing soil productivity and filling reservoirs from sediment deposition in Narmada Basin, India; hence, it is important to recognize soil erosion prone areas for preventive steps in this basin. In this research, prioritization of sub-watersheds of Narmada Basin has been done using game theory-based approaches such as Condorcet and Fallback bargaining. For this purpose, Digital Elevation Model (DEM) generated by Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) was used to extract and analyze 12 morphometric parameters including linear, aerial, and relief parameters. Based on the Condorcet and Fallback bargaining methods, the Mohgaon watershed came at the first priority ranking, that means it's the most vulnerable watershed from the point of soil erosion (SE). Game theory was successfully implemented for prioritizing watersheds in term of SE. The findings showed that morphometric parameters and game theory approach have a high efficiency in recognizing areas that are vulnerable to erosion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine the impact of religious identity and village-level religious fragmentation on behavior in Tullock contests. We report on a series of two-player Tullock contest experiments conducted on a sample of 516 Hindu and Muslim participants in rural West Bengal, India. Our treatments are the identity of the two players and the degree of religious fragmentation in the village where subjects reside. Our main finding is that the effect of social identity is small and inconsistent across the two religious groups in our study. While we find small but statistically significant results in line with our hypotheses in the Hindu sample, we find no statistically significant effects in the Muslim sample. This is in contrast to evidence from Chakravarty et al. (2016), who report significant differences in cooperation levels in prisoners’ dilemma and stag hunt games, both in terms of village composition and identity. We attribute this to the fact that social identity may have a more powerful effect on cooperation than on conflict. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An index of ethnic segregation conveys the extent of spatial mixing of ethnic groups, whereas an index of ethnic polarization and similar diversity measures show the overall balance between the groups. We present a game-theoretic model of conflict in which local success of one ethnic group encourages attacks by its co-ethnics in neighboring areas. Conditional on conflict breaking out, we find that for highly ethnically polarized societies, increasing ethnic segregation decreases the incidence and intensity of conflict. In contrast, in societies with low ethnic polarization, increasing segregation increases conflict. This is because segregation and polarization jointly determine the spread of conflict, an important channel that has been neglected previously. We find strong empirical support for model predictions in two very different conflicts: Hindu–Muslim riots in the 1980s and 1990s in India and the Bosnian Civil War from 1992 to 1995. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In spite of a pronounced increase in the number of states that have adopted anti-defection laws over the past several decades, the literature on party unity in democratic legislatures has paid scant attention to understanding the conditions that lead to the adoption of such restrictive measures on the mobility of elected deputies. This article seeks to fill this gap. The authors provide a simple game-theoretic model to explain the passage of anti-defection measures in India, in 1985, and Israel, in 1991. These two democratic states were among the first to experiment with the constitutionalisation of anti-defection measures. Moreover, their comparison is important because although these laws were adopted under seemingly very different circumstances, they were supported with a strong consensus by both the government party, or coalition, and the opposition. It is argued that the reasons for the passage of the anti-defection laws in these two states were rooted in the strategic consequences of the changes that took place in the format of their party systems. The Indian and the Israeli cases show, respectively, that a dominant party system (India) and a tightly balanced bipolar party system (Israel) provided equally compelling incentives for rampant party switching between government and opposition, which therefore created an incentive for both sides to agree to, and adopt, a strict legislative measure to curb defections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine the informal exchange of favors in societies such that any two individuals interact too infrequently to sustain exchange, but such that the social pressure of the possible loss of multiple relationships can sustain exchange. Patterns of exchange that are locally enforceable and renegotiation-proof necessitate that all links are 'supported': any two individuals exchanging favors have a common friend. In symmetric settings, such robust networks are 'social quilts': tree-like unions of completely connected subnetworks. Examining favor exchange networks in 75 villages in rural India, we find high levels of support and identify characteristics that correlate with support. (JEL D85, O12, O18, Z13) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article describes the concept of backward induction in animal fables in India. It is inferred that backward induction was developed by game theorists to analyze the process of reasoning employed by human and animal actors in some Indian fables. Several fables are highlighted including "The Tiger and the Traveler," "The Lion, the Mouse and the Cat" and "The Cat and the Mouse."