This paper studies a simple model of experimentation and innovation. Our analysis suggests that patents may improve the allocation of resources by encouraging rapid experimentation and efficient ex post transfer of knowledge across firms. Each firm receives a private signal on the success...

We develop a model of information exchange through communication and investigate its implications for information aggregation in large societies. An underlying state determines payoffs from different actions. Agents decide which others to form a costly communication link with incurring the...

We study the efficiency of oligopoly equilibria in a model where firms compete over capacities and prices. The motivating example is a communication network where service providers invest in capacities and then compete in prices. Our model economy corresponds to a two-stage game. First, firms...

We present a model of online content sharing where agents sequentially observe an article and must decide whether to share it with others. The article may contain misinformation, but at a cost, agents can fact-check it to determine whether its content is entirely accurate. While agents derive...

Many platforms deploy data collected from users for a multitude of purposes. While some are beneficial to users, others are costly to their privacy. The presence of these privacy costs means that platforms may need to provide guarantees about how and to what extent user data will be harvested...

We build a model of online behavioral manipulation driven by AI advances. A platform dynamically offers one of n products to a user who slowly learns product quality. User learning depends on a product's "glossiness,' which captures attributes that make products appear more attractive than they...

Adaptation to dynamic conditions requires a certain degree of diversity. If all agents take the best current action, learning that the underlying state has changed and behavior should adapt will be slower. Diversity is harder to maintain when there is fast communication between agents, because...

We study the perfect Bayesian equilibrium of a model of learning over a general social network. Each individual receives a signal about the underlying state of the world, observes the past actions of a stochastically-generated neighborhood of individuals, and chooses one of two possible actions....

This paper shows that large economic downturns may result from the propagation of microeconomic shocks over the input-output linkages across different firms or sectors within the economy. Building on the framework of Acemoglu et al. (2012), we argue that the economy's input-output structure can...

We develop a theoretical model of security investments in a network of interconnected agents. Network connections introduce the possibility of cascading failures due to an exogenous or endogenous attack depending on the profile of security investments by the agents. The general presumption in...