This paper investigates collective denial and willful blindness in groups, organizations and markets. Agents with anticipatory preferences, linked through an interaction structure, choose how to interpret and recall public signals about future prospects. Wishful thinking (denial of bad news) is...

We study the attitudes of junior and senior employees towards strategic uncertainty and competition, by means of a market entry game inspired by Camerer and Lovallo (1999). Seniors exhibit higher entry rates compared to juniors, especially when earnings depend on relative performance. This...

In this paper, we analyze a principal's optimal feedback policy in tournaments. We close a gap in the literature by assuming the principal to be unable to commit to a certain policy at the beginning of the tournament. Our analysis shows that in equilibrium the principal reveals intermediate...

We investigate the impact of various audit schemes on the future provision of public goods, when contributing less than the average of the group is sanctioned exogenously and the probability of an audit is unknown. We study how individuals update their beliefs about the probability of being...

We investigate how different forms of scrutiny affect dishonesty, using Gneezy's (2005) deception game. We add a third player whose interests are aligned with those of the sender. We find that lying behavior is not sensitive to revealing the sender's identity to the observer. The option for...