Geography and social links shape economic interactions. In industries, schools, and markets, the entire network determines outcomes. This paper analyzes a large class of games and obtains a striking result. Equilibria depend on a single network measure: the lowest eigenvalue. This paper is the...

We study minority representation in the workplace when employers engage in optimal sequential search and minorities convey noisier signals of ability than mainstream job candidates. The greater signal noise makes it harder for minorities to change employers' prior beliefs. When employers are...

We analyze a notion of self-confirming equilibrium with non-neutral ambiguity attitudes that generalizes the traditional concept. We show that the set of equilibria expands as ambiguity aversion increases. The intuition is quite simple: by playing the same strategy in a stationary environment,...

An evolutionary game model shows how an equilibrium distribution of competence may evolve when members of a population prey on one another, but when predatory competence is costly to acquire. Under one interpretation, the competence distribution is an endogenously determined distribution of...

A player i's actions in a game are determined by her beliefs about other players; these depend on the game's real-life context, not only its formal description. Define a game situation as a game together with such beliefs; call the beliefs— and i's resulting expectation—rational if there is...

We experimentally test an endogenous-timing investment model in which subjects privately observe their cost of investing and a signal correlated with the common investment return. Subjects overinvest, relative to Nash. We separately consider whether subjects draw inferences, in hindsight, and...

We experimentally study decentralized organizational learning. Our objective is to understand how learning members of an organization cope with the confounding effects of the simultaneous learning of others. We test the predictions of a stylized, rational agent model of organizational learning...

We study costless pre-play communication of intentions among inexperienced players. Using the level-k model of strategic thinking to describe players' beliefs, we fully characterize the effects of preplay communication in symmetric 2x2 games. One-way communication weakly increases coordination...

Agents face a coordination problem akin to the adoption of a network technology. A principal announces investment subsidies that, at minimal cost, attain a given likelihood of successful coordination. Optimal subsidies target agents who impose high externalities on others and on whom others...

A new data set facilitates study of learning spillovers in World War II shipbuilding. Our results contain two principal but contrasting themes. First, learning spillovers were a significant source of productivity growth, and may have contributed more than conventional learning effects. Second,...