We consider one-to-one matching problems under two modalities of uncertainty that differ in the way types are assigned to agents. Individuals have preferences over the possible types of the agents from the opposite market side and initially know the “name” but not the ”type” of the other...

Using a natural voting experiment in Switzerland that encompasses a 160-year period (1848–2009), we investigate whether a higher level of complexity leads to increased reliance on expert knowledge. We find that when more referenda are held on the same day, constituents are more likely to refer...

We consider a game of information transmission, with one informed decision maker gathering information from one or more informed senders. Private information is (conditionally) correlated across players, and communication is cheap talk. For the one sender case, we show that correlation...

We propose a stylized model of a problem-solving organization whose internal communication structure is given by a fixed network. Problems arrive randomly anywhere in this network and must find their way to their respective “specialized solvers” by relying on local information alone. The...

We examine how three different communication processes operating through social networks are affected by homophily - the tendency of individuals to associate with others similar to themselves. Homophily has no effect if messages are broadcast or sent via shortest paths; only connection density...

The paper shows that Perfect Bayesian equilibria need not be unique in the strategic communication game of Crawford and Sobel (1982). First, different equilibrium partitions of the state space can have equal cardinality, despite fixed prior beliefs. Hence, there can be different equilibrium...

Economists and sociologists disagree over markets' potential to assume functions typically performed by networks of personal connections, first among them the transmission of information. This paper begins from a model of labor markets where social ties are stronger between similar individuals...

This paper analyses the efficient management of nonpoint source pollution (NPS) under limited pollution control budget and incomplete information inherent in NPS pollution. By incorporating information acquisition into a pollution control model, it focuses on the tradeoff between data collection...

We examine patterns of acquiring non-native languages in a model with two languages and two populations with heterogeneous learning skills, where every individual faces a binary choice of learning the foreign language or refraining from doing so. We show that both interior and corner linguistic...

Much of the job search literature assumes bilateral meetings between workers and firms. This ignores the frictions that arise when meetings are actually multilateral. I analyze the magnitude of these frictions by presenting an equilibrium job search model with an endogenous number of contacts....