so tomorrow i'm re-taking my quals.

despite getting over 50 percent on every section, the macro department decided to give the useless "m.a. pass" on the first round of the macro quals.

thanks guys. i seriously think that artun and i had the highest non-phd. passes in the history of the department.

now i have to take a micro qual which i got a stellar "35 percent" on the first time. apparently, that's good enough for a master's degree.

but before you laugh too much, i have a game for you to solve.

a firm and a union are bargaining. there are two total periods. the union knows the firm's profits are uniformally distributed on the interval [0,1]. the union makes an offer, call it w1, to the firm. if the firm accepts, its payoff is: 2(profit-w1). the union's payoff is: 2w1. if the offer is rejected, the union makes another offer, w2. the payoffs are, quite obviously, (profit-w2) for the firm and w2 for the union.

solve for w1 and w2 numerically.

the winner (any of my non-econ friends) gets $2.

if you want this to be sports-related, replace firm with "nhl" and union with "nhlpa." note that in this sports-related game, the nhl rejected the union's offer about 500 times.