Essays in game theory on investment and social organization

This dissertation uses cooperative and non-cooperative game theory to examine the role of investment (broadly defined) in social organization. It's composed of three chapters. The first chapter examines bidirectional investment in partnerships and characterizes the stable relationships among the benefits players produce and receive, their costs, and their payoffs. The second chapter extends the model of the first chapter to allow for multilateral matching and investment; it shows that many of the results of the bilateral case remain true in the more general case. The third chapter examines investment in social links to secure future help and characterizes the equilibrium network/linking architecture and welfare.