This thesis studies several issues in the field of macroeconomic and financial stability. In Chapter 2, I argue that systemic bankruptcy of firms can originate from coordination failure in an economy with investment complementarities. I demonstrate that in such an economy, a very small uncertainty about economic fundamentals can be magnified through the uncertainty about the investment decisions of other firms and can lead to coordination failure, which may be manifested as systemic bankruptcy. Moreover, my model reveals that systemic bankruptcy tends to arise when economic fundamentals are in the middle range where coordination matters. High financial leverage of firms greatly increases the severity of systemic bankruptcy. Optimistic beliefs of firms and banks can alleviate coordination failure, but can also increase the severity of systemic bankruptcy once it happens. Chapter 3 studies how coordination failure in a country's new technology investment dampens a country's economic growth. I establish a two-sector Overlapping Generation model where capital goods are produced by two different technologies. The first is a conventional technology with constant returns. The second is a new technology exhibiting increasing returns to scale due to technological externalities, about whose returns economic agents have only incomplete information. My model reveals that coordination failure in new technology investment can lead to slower economic growth. More interestingly, the model generates a positive correlation between economic growth and volatility. In Chapter 4, Frank Milne and I establish a dynamic currency attack model in the presence of a large player. In an attack on a fixed exchange rate regime with a gradually overvalued currency, both the inability of speculators to synchronize their attack and their incentive to time the collapse of the regime lead to the persistent overvaluation of the currency. We find that the presence of a large player can accelerate or delay the collapse of the regime, depending on his incentives to preempt other speculators or to ``ride the overvaluation." / Thesis (Ph.D, Economics) -- Queen's University, 2007-11-28 15:26:27.834

This dissertation consists of three essays concerned with coordination, cooperation and the governance of institutions. / Economics

京都大学 / 新制・課程博士 / 博士(経済学) / 甲第24382号 / 経博第669号 / 新制||経||303(附属図書館) / 京都大学大学院経済学研究科経済学専攻 / (主査)教授 関口 格, 准教授 陳 珈惠, 教授 渡辺 誠 / 学位規則第4条第1項該当 / Doctor of Economics / Kyoto University / DFAM

[pt] Este artigo considera o papel da comunicação como um instrumento de política usado pelo Banco Central. No modelo, um Banco Central que possui mais informação que os formadores de preço sobre o estado da economia pode, através de uma comunicação sem custos (cheap talk ), influenciar suas decisões de precificação. Nós relacionamos o grau de comunicação a fundamentos da economia, como as preferências do Banco Central, a quantidade de informação que os agentes possuem e o grau de complementariedade de suas decisões de precificação. / [en] This paper considers the role played by communication as a policy instrument by the Central Bank. In the model, a Central Banker who is better informed than the price setters about the state of the Economy can, through (cheap talk) communication, influence their pricing behavior. We relate the degree of communication to fundamentals of the economy such as the Central Banker`s preferences, the amount of information possessed by market agents and the degree of complementarity in their price- setting decisions.

Thesis advisor: Susanto Basu / The goal of this dissertation is to shed some light on three separate aspects of the financial system that can lead to greater instability in the banking sector and greater macroeconomic volatility. The starting point of the Great Recession was the collapse of the banking sector in late 2007; in the subsequent months, liquidity evaporated in many markets for short term funding. The process of creating liquidity carried out by the banking system involves the transformation of long term illiquid assets into short term liquid liabilities. This engine functions properly as long as cash lenders continue to roll over short term funding to banks; whenever these lenders fear that banks will not be able to pay back these obligations, they immediately stop funding banks' short term liabilities. This makes banks unable to repay maturing short term debt, which leads to large spikes in default risk. This is often referred to as a modern bank run. Virtually all the theories of bank runs suggest that the severity of a run depends on how well lenders can coordinate their beliefs: whenever a lender expects many others to run, he becomes more likely to run as well. In a joint work with Emanuele Brancati, the first chapter of my dissertation, we empirically document the role of coordination in explaining bank runs and default risk. We establish two new results. First, when information is more precise and agents can better coordinate their actions, a change in market expectations has a larger impact on default risk; this implies that more precise information increases the vulnerability or instability of the banking system. This result has a clear policy implication: if policymakers want to stabilize the banking system they should promote opacity instead of transparency, especially during periods of financial turmoil. Second, we show that when a bank is expected to perform poorly, lower dispersion of beliefs actually increases default risk; this result is in contrast with standard theories in finance and can be rationalized by thinking about the impact that more precise information has on the ability of creditors to coordinate on a bank run. Another aspect of the banking system that is creating a lot of instability in Europe is the so called "disastrous banks-sovereign nexus": many banks in troubled countries owned a disproportionately large amount of domestic sovereign bonds; therefore, in case of a default of the sovereign country, the whole domestic banking sector would incur insurmountable losses. This behavior is puzzling because these banks in troubled countries would greatly benefit from having a more diversified asset portfolio, but instead decide to load up with domestic sovereign debt only. In a joint work with Filippo De Marco, the second chapter of my dissertation, we show that banks receive political pressures from their respective governments to load up on domestic sovereigns. First, we show that banks with a larger fraction of politicians as shareholders display greater home bias. More importantly, we exploit the fact that low-performing banks received liquidity injections by their domestic governments to show that, among those banks, only the "political banks" drastically increased their home bias upon receiving government help. Furthermore, it appears that the extent of political pressure on banks is much stronger on those "political banks" belonging to troubled countries. These findings suggest that troubled countries that would need to pay a high premium to issue new debt force their "political banks" to purchase part of the debt issuance. This greater risk-synchronization can create a dangerous loop of higher sovereign default risk leading to insolvency of the domestic banking system, which in turn would require a bail-out from the local government, further exacerbating the sovereign de- fault risk. Finally, the third chapter of my dissertation, a joint work with Susanto Basu, investigates the sources of excess consumption volatility in emerging markets. It is a well documented fact that, in emerging markets, consumption is more volatile than output whereas the opposite is true in developed economies. We propose an explanation for this phenomenon that relies on a specific form of financial markets incompleteness: we assume that households would always want to front-load consumption and they can borrow from abroad up to a fraction of the value of posted collateral. With the value of collateral being procyclical, households are able to increase borrowing during an expansion and ultimately consume more than they produce; this mechanism is then able to generate a ratio of consumption volatility to output volatility grater than one. Most importantly, the model delivers the implication that a better ability to borrow vis-a-vis the same value of collateral generates greater relative consumption volatility. We then bring this model's implication to the data and find empirical support for it. We proxy the ability to borrow with various measures of effectiveness of lending regulation and more standard indicators of financial development. Consistent with the model's implication, more lending friendly regulation leads to greater relative consumption volatility in emerging markets; moreover, this link breaks down among developed countries. In addition, among emerging countries, it appears that deeper domestic capital markets have a destabilizing effect in terms of greater relative consumption volatility while a more developed domestic banking system does not exerts any such detrimental effect. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2015. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Economics.

Cette thèse est composée de trois chapitres distincts. Dans le premier chapitre, coécrit avec Edouard Challe, nous analysons la détermination jointe de l'information incorporée dans les prix, et la composition du marché par type d’ordres sur un marché d'actifs avec information dispersée. La microstructure du marché est telle que les agents informés peuvent placer soit des ordres de marché simples, soit un ensemble d’ordres limites. Les market-makers établissent le prix. Les agents utilisant des ordres de marché simple négocient moins agressivement sur leur information et réduisent ainsi le contenu informationnel du prix; dans un marché où seul ce type d’ordre est présent, l'information incorporée dans le prix est limitée, quelle que soit la qualité de l'information des agents sur le dividende de l'actif. Lorsque les agents peuvent choisir leur type d'ordre et les ordres limites sont plus coûteux que les ordres de marché, alors les agents choisissent majoritairement les ordres de marché lorsque la précision des signaux privés tend vers l'infini. Les ordres limites sont des substituts: à des niveaux élevés de précision, une fraction résiduelle d’agents plaçant des ordres limites est suffisante pour aligner le prix aux signaux des agents, et donc au dividende. Ainsi le gain à conditionner ses ordres au prix (via des ordres limites) en plus de son propre signal (comme le font tous les agents) disparaît. Nous appliquons ensuite ce mécanisme dans le deuxième chapitre de cette thèse. Les spéculateurs envisageant une attaque (comme dans le cas des crises de change) doivent deviner les croyances des autres spéculateurs, ce qu'ils peuvent faire en regardant le marché boursier. Ce chapitre examine si ce processus de collecte d'informations est stabilisateur, en ancrant mieux les attentes ou déstabilisateur en générant des équilibres multiples. Pour ce faire, nous étudions les résultats d'un jeu global en deux étapes où un prix d'actif déterminé au stade de négociation du jeu fournit un signal public endogène sur le fondamental qui affecte la décision des agents d'attaquer dans la phase de coordination du jeu. La microstructure du marché d’actif reprend celle étudiée dans le premier chapitre. Les frictions de microstructure qui conduisent à une plus grande exposition individuelle (au risque d'exécution des prix) peuvent réduire l'incertitude agrégée (en fixant un résultat d'équilibre unique). Enfin, dans le troisième chapitre, en collaboration avec Victor Lyonnet, nous présentons un modèle des interactions entre les banques traditionnelles et les shadow banks qui parle de leur coexistence. Au cours de la crise financière de 2007, certains actifs et passifs des shadow banks sont passées aux banques traditionnelles et les actifs ont été vendus à des prix de fire sale. Notre modèle réplique ces faits stylisés. La différence entre les banques traditionnelles et les shadow banks est double. Premièrement, les banques traditionnelles ont accès à un fonds de garantie qui leur permet de se financer sans risque en période de crise. Deuxièmement, les banques traditionnelles doivent respecter une réglementation coûteuse. Nous montrons qu'en cas de crise, les shadow banks liquident les actifs pour rembourser leurs créanciers, alors que les banques traditionnelles achètent ces actifs à des prix de fire sale. Cet échange d'actifs en temps de crise génère une complémentarité entre les banques traditionnelles et les shadow banks, où chaque type d'intermédiaire profite de la présence de l'autre. Nous constatons deux effets concurrents d'une petite diminution du soutien des banques traditionnelles en période de crise, que nous appelons effet de substitution et effet de revenu. Ce dernier effet domine le premier, de sorte qu’un niveau de soutien anticipé plus faible aux banques traditionnelles en temps de crise induit plus de banquiers à s’orienter vers le secteur traditionnel ex-ante. / This dissertation is made of three distinct chapters. In the first chapter, which is joint with Edouard Challe, we analyse the joint determination of price informativeness and the composition of the market by order type in a large asset market with dispersed information. The market microstructure is one in which informed traders may place market orders or full demand schedules and where market makers set the price. Market-order traders trade less aggressively on their information and thus reduce the informativeness of the price; in a full market-order market, price informativeness is bounded, whatever the quality of traders’ information about the asset’s dividend. When traders can choose their order type and demand schedules are (even marginally) costlier than market orders, then market-order traders overwhelm the market when the precision of private signals goes to infinity. This is because demand schedules are substitutes: at high levels of precision, a residual fraction of demand-schedule traders is sufficient to take the trading price close to traders’ signals, while the latter is itself well aligned with the dividend. Hence, the gain from trading conditional on the price (as demand-schedule traders do) in addition to one’s own signal (as all informed traders do) vanishes. We then apply this idea in the second chapter of this dissertation. Speculators contemplating an attack (e.g., on a currency peg) must guess the beliefs of other speculators, which they can do by looking at the stock market. This chapter examines whether this information-gathering process is stabilizing by better anchoring expectations or destabilizing by creating multiple self-fulfilling equilibria. To do so, we study the outcome of a two-stage global game wherein an asset price determined at the trading stage of the game provides an endogenous public signal about the fundamental that affects traders’ decision to attack in the coordination stage of the game. The trading stage follows the microstructure of the first chapter. Price execution risk reduces traders’ aggressiveness and hence slows down information aggregation, which ultimately makes multiple equilibria in the coordination stage less likely. In this sense, microstructure frictions that lead to greater individual exposure (to price execution risk) may reduce aggregate uncertainty (by pinning down a unique equilibrium outcome). Finally, in the third chapter, joint with Victor Lyonnet, we present a model of the interactions between traditional and shadow banks that speaks to their coexistence. In the 2007 financial crisis, some of shadow banks’ assets and liabilities have moved to traditional banks, and assets were sold at fire sale prices. Our model is able to accommodate these stylized facts. The difference between traditional and shadow banks is twofold. First, traditional banks have access to a guarantee fund that enables them to issue claims to households in a crisis. Second, traditional banks have to comply with costly regulation. We show that in a crisis, shadow banks liquidate assets to repay their creditors, while traditional banks purchase these assets at fire-sale prices. This exchange of assets in a crisis generates a complementarity between traditional and shadow banks, where each type of intermediary benefits from the presence of the other. We find two competing effects from a small decrease in traditional banks’ support in a crisis, which we dub a substitution effect and an income effect. The latter effect dominates the former, so that lower anticipated support to traditional banks in a crisis induces more bankers to run a traditional bank ex-ante.

Questa tesi si compone di due capitoli indipendenti, ciascuno dei quali analizza il ruolo giocato dall’informazione pubblica endogenamente determinata in situazioni caratterizzate da decision-making decentralizzato e da complementarietà strategica. Il primo capitolo analizza un regime-change game, in cui un governo autoritario può influenzare il consenso popolare attraverso l’implementazione di uno strumento di policy. A policy implementata, i cittadini possono tentare di destituire il governo in carica attraverso una rivolta popolare, la cui probabilità di successo è proporzionale al numero di partecipanti, quest’ultimo proporzionale al livello medio di malcontento. Per migliorare l’efficacia del policy-making, il governo necessita di informazioni affidabili sul consenso popolare, tipicamente difficili da reperire. Tali informazioni sono potenzialmente destabilizzanti, poiché aiutano i cittadini a coordinare meglio la loro azione collettiva. I risultati suggeriscono che maggiore trasparenza è desiderabile ex ante per quei regimi che, in equilibrio, hanno maggiore probabilità di implementare delle politiche di consensus-building. Maggiori livelli di libertà di informazione dovrebbero quindi essere osservati in regimi né troppo deboli, né troppo forti. Il secondo capitolo propone un modello di bank run, in cui la presenza di un mercato secondario efficiente dal punto di vista informativo destabilizza una istituzione a priori solida, tramutando uno shock temporaneo di liquidità in una spirale di fire-sales. Gli investitori di un fondo open-ended posso richiedere la liquidazione anticipata delle proprie quote dopo aver ricevuto informazioni private riguardo alla qualità degli asset in portafogli. Per rimborsare le quote, il fund manager vende una quota di asset sul mercato secondario. I potenziali acquirenti estraggono informazione dall’osservazione dell’offerta aggregata: maggiori volumi d’offerta corrispondono ad un maggior numero di investitori pessimisti, e suggeriscono quindi che gli asset potrebbero essere di scarsa qualità. Temendo una spirale discendente dei prezzi, anche gli investitori meno pessimisti sono indotti, ex ante, a liquidare le proprie quote, ulteriormente sostenendo il feedback negativo. Quando l’informazione privata è sufficientemente imprecisa, complementarietà strategica nelle azioni degli investitori del fondo emerge endogenamente. / This dissertation consists of two essays, aimed at providing a sound theoretical investigation of the signaling role of (observed) collective behavior in environments characterized by incomplete information and strategic complementarity. The effects of both endogenous signaling and (the disclosure of) exogenous public information on the degree of coordination failure that arises from decentralized decision-making are analyzed in-depth. In the first chapter I analyze a regime-change game, where an authoritarian government can influence popular support via the implementation of costly policies. Citizens can challenge the government via a riot, whose chances to succeed increase with the unknown average popular discontent. In order to fine-tune its policy-making, the regime needs reliable information about popular consensus. Such information, however, improves the ability of citizens to coordinate their revolt. I show that public information is ex ante beneficial for those regimes which are more likely to build consensus via policy-making in equilibrium. Higher levels of media freedom should therefore be observed in regimes that are neither too weak, nor too strong. In the second chapter I study a bank run model, where the informational efficiency of a (secondary) financial market pushes into insolvency an a priori solvent institution after a temporary, non-fundamental liquidity shock. The most pessimistic investors of an open-ended fund are allowed to ask for the early liquidation of their share after receiving private information about the economic fundamentals of the fund’s portfolio of assets. Some of the assets in portfolio are sold in the secondary market to meet those investors’ requests. Higher volumes of early redemptions decrease both the current price, via a standard law-of-demand effect, and the future price, by signaling bad news to the market. Anticipating such effect, less pessimistic investors, too, opt for early liquidation, thus further exacerbating the price spiral. Strategic complementarity arises endogenously when investors’ private information is sufficiently poor. In this case, a spiral of fire sales is observed in equilibrium.

Submitted by Ana Elisa Gonçalves Pereira (anaelisagpereira@gmail.com) on 2016-07-15T20:58:30Z No. of bitstreams: 1 tese_biblio.pdf: 1099623 bytes, checksum: 3fae0f61b515374855a0c7773cd4cb47 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Suzinei Teles Garcia Garcia (suzinei.garcia@fgv.br) on 2016-07-18T12:03:10Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 tese_biblio.pdf: 1099623 bytes, checksum: 3fae0f61b515374855a0c7773cd4cb47 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2016-07-18T13:39:54Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 tese_biblio.pdf: 1099623 bytes, checksum: 3fae0f61b515374855a0c7773cd4cb47 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2016-06-24 / There are several economic situations in which an agent’s willingness to take a given action is increasing in the amount of other agents who are expected to do the same. These kind of strategic complementarities often lead to multiple equilibria. Moreover, the outcome achieved by agents’ decentralized decisions may be inefficient, leaving room for policy interventions. This dissertation analyzes different environments in which coordination among individuals is a concern. The first chapter analyzes how information manipulation and disclosure affect coordination and welfare in a bank-run model. There is a financial regulator who cannot credibly commit to reveal the situation of the banking sector truthfully. The regulator observes banks’ idiosyncratic information (through a stress test, for example) and chooses whether to disclose it to the public or only to release a report on the health of the entire financial system. The aggregate report may be distorted at a cost – higher cost means higher credibility. Investors are aware of the regulator’s incentives to conceal bad news from the market, but manipulation may still be effective. If the regulator’s credibility is not too low, the disclosure policy is state-contingent and there is always a range of states in which there is information manipulation in equilibrium. If credibility is low enough, the regulator opts for full transparency, since opacity would trigger a systemic run no matter the state. In this case only the most solid banks survive. The level of credibility that maximizes welfare from an ex ante perspective is interior. The second and the third chapters study coordination problems in dynamic environments. The second chapter analyzes welfare in a setting where agents receive random opportunities to switch between two competing networks. It shows that whenever the intrinsically worst one prevails, this is efficient. In fact, a central planner would be even more inclined towards the worst option. Inefficient shifts to the intrinsically best network might occur in equilibrium. When there are two competing standards or networks of different qualities, if everyone were to opt for one of them at the same time, the efficient solution would be to choose the best one. However, when there are timing frictions and agents do not switch from one option to another all at once, the efficient solution differs from conventional wisdom. The third chapter analyzes a dynamic coordination problem with staggered decisions where agents are ex ante heterogeneous. We show there is a unique equilibrium, which is characterized by thresholds that determine the choices of each type of agent. Although payoffs are heterogeneous, the equilibrium features a lot of conformity in behavior. Equilibrium vii thresholds for different types of agents partially coincide as long as there exists a set of beliefs that would make this coincidence possible. However, the equilibrium strategies never fully coincide. Moreover, we show conformity is not inefficient. In the efficient solution, agents follow others even more often than in the decentralized equilibrium. / No estudo da economia, há diversas situações em que a propensão de um indivíduo a tomar determinada ação é crescente na quantidade de outras pessoas que este indivíduo acredita que tomarão a mesma ação. Esse tipo de complementaridade estratégica geralmente leva à existência de múltiplos equilíbrios. Além disso, o resultado atingido pelas decisões decentralizadas dos agentes pode ser ineficiente, deixando espaço para intervenções de política econômica. Esta tese estuda diferentes ambientes em que a coordenação entre indivíduos é importante. O primeiro capítulo analisa como a manipulação de informação e a divulgação de informação afetam a coordenação entre investidores e o bem-estar em um modelo de corridas bancárias. No modelo, há uma autoridade reguladora que não pode se comprometer a revelar a verdadeira situação do setor bancário. O regulador observa informações idiossincráticas dos bancos (através de um stress test, por exemplo) e escolhe se revela essa informação para o público ou se divulga somente um relatório agregado sobre a saúde do sistema financeiro como um todo. O relatório agregado pode ser distorcido a um custo – um custo mais elevado significa maior credibilidade do regulador. Os investidores estão cientes dos incentivos do regulador a esconder más notícias do mercado, mas a manipulação de informação pode, ainda assim, ser efetiva. Se a credibilidade do regulador não for muito baixa, a política de divulgação de informação é estado-contingente, e existe sempre um conjunto de estados em que há manipulação de informação em equilíbrio. Se a credibilidade for suficientemente baixa, porém, o regulador opta por transparência total dos resultados banco-específicos, caso em que somente os bancos mais sólidos sobrevivem. Uma política de opacidade levaria a uma crise bancária sistêmica, independentemente do estado. O nível de credibilidade que maximiza o bem-estar agregado do ponto de vista ex ante é interior. O segundo e o terceiro capítulos estudam problemas de coordenação dinâmicos. O segundo capítulo analisa o bem-estar em um ambiente em que agentes recebem oportunidades aleatórias para migrar entre duas redes. Os resultados mostram que sempre que a rede de pior qualidade (intrínseca) prevalece, isto é eficiente. Na verdade, um planejador central estaria ainda mais inclinado a escolher a rede de pior qualidade. Em equilíbrio, pode haver mudanças ineficientes que ampliem a rede de qualidade superior. Quando indivíduos escolhem entre dois padrões ou redes com níveis de qualidade diferentes, se todos os indivíduos fizessem escolhas simultâneas, a solução eficiente seria que todos adotassem a rede de melhor qualidade. No entanto, quando há fricções e os agentes tomam decisões escalonadas, a solução eficiente difere ix do senso comum. O terceiro capítulo analisa um problema de coordenação dinâmico com decisões escalonadas em que os agentes são heterogêneos ex ante. No modelo, existe um único equilíbrio, caracterizado por thresholds que determinam as escolhas para cada tipo de agente. Apesar da heterogeneidade nos payoffs, há bastante conformidade nas ações individuais em equilíbrio. Os thresholds de diferentes tipos de agentes coincidem parcialmente contanto que exista um conjunto de crenças arbitrário que justifique esta conformidade. No entanto, as estratégias de equilíbrio de diferentes tipos nunca coincidem totalmente. Além disso, a conformidade não é ineficiente. A solução eficiente apresentaria estratégias ainda mais similares para tipos distintos em comparação com o equilíbrio decentralizado.

Coordination is a desirable feature in many multi-agent systems, such as robotic, social and economic networks, allowing the execution of tasks that would be impossible by individual agents. This thesis addresses two problems in stochastic coordination where each agent make decisions strategically, taking into account the decisions of its neighbors over a regular network. In the first problem, we study the coordination in a team of strategic agents choosing to undertake one of the multiple tasks. We adopt a stochastic framework where the agents decide between two distinct tasks whose difficulty is randomly distributed and partially observed. We show that a Nash equilibrium with a simple and intuitive linear structure exists for textit{diffuse} prior distributions on the task difficulties. Additionally, we show that the best response of any agent to an affine strategy profile can be nonlinear when the prior distribution is not diffuse. Then, we state an algorithm that allows us to efficiently compute a data-driven Nash equilibrium within the class of affine policies. In the second problem, we assume that the payoff structure of the coordination game corresponds to a single task allocation scenario whose difficulty is perfectly observed. Since there are multiple Nash equilibria in this game, the agents must use a distributed stochastic algorithm know as textit{log linear learning} to play it multiple times. First, we show that this networked coordination game is a potential game. Moreover, we establish that for regular networks, the convergence to a Nash equilibrium depends on the ratio between the task-difficulty parameter and the connectivity degree according to a threshold rule. We investigate via simulations the interplay between rationality and the degree of connectivity of the network. Our results show counter-intuitive behaviors such as the existence of regimes in which agents in a network with larger connectivity require less rational agents to converge to the Nash equilibrium with high probability. Simultaneously, we examined the characteristics of both regular graphical coordination games and non-regular graphical games using this particular bi-matrix game model. / Master of Science / This thesis focuses on addressing two problems in stochastic coordination among strategic agents in multi-agent systems, such as robotic, social, and economic networks. The first problem studies the coordination among agents when they need to choose between multiple tasks whose difficulties are randomly distributed and partially observed. The thesis shows the existence of a Nash equilibrium with a linear structure for certain prior distributions, and presents an algorithm to efficiently compute a data-driven Nash equilibrium within a specific class of policies. The second problem assumes a single task allocation scenario, whose difficulty is perfectly observed, and investigates the use of a distributed stochastic algorithm known as log-linear learning to converge to a Nash equilibrium. The thesis shows that the convergence to a Nash equilibrium depends on the task-difficulty parameter and the connectivity degree of the network, and explores the influence of rationality of the agents and the connectivity of the network on the learning process. Overall, the thesis provides insights into the challenges and opportunities in achieving coordination among strategic agents in multi-agent systems.