Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/26646 
Year of Publication: 
2009
Series/Report no.: 
CESifo Working Paper No. 2601
Publisher: 
Center for Economic Studies and ifo Institute (CESifo), Munich
Abstract: 
We interpret the Open Method of Coordination (OMC), recently adopted by the EU as a mode of governance in the area of social policy and other fields, as an imitative learning dynamics of the type considered in evolutionary game theory. The best-practise feature and the iterative design of the OMC correspond to the behavioral rule imitate the best.” In a redistribution game with utilitarian governments and mobile welfare beneficiaries, we compare the outcomes of imitative behavior (long-run evolutionary equilibrium), decentralized best-response behaviour (Nash equilibrium), and coordinated policies. The main result is that the OMC allows policy coordination on a strict subset of the set of Nash equilibria, favoring in particular coordination on intermediate values of the policy instrument.
Subjects: 
Open Method of Coordination
Finite-population Evolutionarily Stable Strategy
imitation
mobility
redistribution
JEL: 
H77
H75
C73
Document Type: 
Working Paper
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