About:

A principal would like to decide which of two parties deserves a prize. Each party privately observes the state of nature that determines which of them deserves the prize. The principal presents each party with a text that truthfully describes the conditions for deserving the prize and asks each of them what the state of nature is.

The parties can cheat but the principal knows their choice procedure. The principal is able to “magically implement” his goal if he can come up with a pair of texts satisfying that in any dispute, he will recognize the cheater by applying the “honest-cheater asymmetry principle”. According to this principle, the truth is with the party satisfying that if his statement is true, then the other party (using the given choice procedure) could have cheated and made the statement he is making, but not the other way around. Examples are presented to illustrate the concept.

Ariel Rubinstein was born in Jerusalem and received his PhD from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem in 1979. He has been a Professor at the Hebrew University and at Princeton and currently is a Professor (Emeritus) at Tel Aviv University and a Professor of Economics at New York University. 

He has served as the President of the Econometric Society (2004). He is a foreign honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Economic Association, an Elected Fellow of the Israeli Academy of Sciences and Elected Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy. 

His 8 books reflect his research interests: Bargaining and Markets (with M. Osborne) (1990), A Course in Game Theory (with M. Osborne) (1994), Modeling Bounded Rationality (1998), Economics and Language (2000), Lecture Notes in Microeconomics (2005), Models of Microeconomic Theory (with M.Osborne) (2020) and No Prices, No Games (with M.Richter)(2024). His book Economic Fables (2012) presents his general views about Economic Theory. 

He created and manages the Atlas of Cafes (where one can think). All his books and articles are accessed through his homepage https://arielrubinstein.tau.ac.il.

Please note Professor Rubinstein will also give the ICMS Christmas Lecture on Thursday 12 December at 18.00 UK Time:
ICMS Christmas lecture, Economics with no prices and no games