We study the effects of reputation and competition in a stylized market for experience goods. If interaction is anonymous, such markets perform poorly: sellers are not trustworthy, and buyers do not trust sellers. If sellers are identifiable and can, hence, build a reputation, efficiency...

Arguing that consumers are the carriers of firms’ reputations, we examine the role of consumer networks for trust in markets that suffer from moral hazard. When consumers are embedded in a network, they can exchange information with their neighbours about their private experiences with...

This paper analyzes an election game where self-interested politicians can exploit the lack of information that voters have about candidates' preferred policies in order to pursue their own agendas. In such a setup, we study the incentives of newspapers to acquire costly information, and how...

Professional experts offer advice with the objective of appearing well informed. Their ability is evaluated on the basis of the advice given and of the realized state of the world. This situation is modeled as a reputational cheap-talk game in which the expert receives a signal of continuously...

The quality of political candidates often depends on the current state of the world, for example because their personal characteristics are more valuable in some situations than in others. We explore the implications of state-dependent candidate quality in a model of electoral competition where...