We introduce the interview assignment problem, which generalizes the one-to-one matching model of Gale and Shapley (1962) by introducing a stage of costly information acquisition. Agents may learn preferences over partners via costly interviews. Although there exist multiple equilibria where all...

This paper examines the importance of buyer-supplier relationships, geography and the structure of the production network in firm performance. We develop a simple model where firms can outsource tasks and search for suppliers in different locations. Low search and outsourcing costs lead firms to...

Can we identify the members of a community who are best- placed to diffuse information simply by asking a random sample of individuals? We show that boundedly-rational individuals can, simply by tracking sources of gossip, identify those who are most central in a network according to "diffusion...

The internet has facilitated the creation of new markets characterized by large scale, increased customization, rapid innovation and the collection and use of detailed consumer and market data. I describe these changes and some of the economic theory that has been useful for thinking about...

Over the past decade there has been a decline in the fraction of papers in top economics journals written by economists from the highest-ranked economics departments. This paper documents this fact and uses additional data on publications and citations to assess various potential explanations....

A large literature following Hirsch (2005) has proposed citation-based indexes that could be used to rank academics. This paper examines how well several such indexes match labor market outcomes using data on the citation records of young tenured economists at 25 U.S. departments. Variants of...

This paper is a non-technical and somewhat philosophical essay, that seeks to investigate the relationship between economics and reality. More precisely, it asks how reality in the form empirical evidence does or does not influence economic thinking and theory. In particular, which role do...