Empirical evidence shows that the perception of information is strongly concentrated in those environments in which a mass of producers and users of knowledge interact through a distribution medium. This paper considers the consequences of this fact for economic equilibrium analysis. In...

We propose that multinational firms learn about their profitability in a particular market by observing their performance in nearby markets. We first develop a model of firm expectations formation with noisy signals from multiple markets and derive predictions on expectations formation and...

In this paper we build a formal model to study market environments where information is costly to acquire and is of use also to potential competitors. In such situations a market for information may form, where reports - of unverifiable quality - over the information acquired are sold. A...

We study a general static noisy rational expectations model, where investors have private information about asset payoffs, with common and private components, and about their own exposure to an aggregate risk factor, and derive conditions for existence and uniqueness (or multiplicity) of...

Private provision of public goods often takes place as a war of attrition: individuals wait until someone else volunteers and provides the good. After a certain time period, however, one individual may be randomly selected. If the individuals are uncertain about their cost of provision, but can...

We analyze vertical product differentiation in a model where a good's quality is unobservable to buyers before purchase, a continuum of quality levels is technologically feasible, and minimum quality is supplied under competitive conditions. After purchase the true quality of the good is...

The emergence of competition is a defining aspect of human nature and characterizes many important social environments. However, its relationship with how social groups are formed has received little attention. We design an experiment to analyze how individuals' willingness to compete is...

We study the nature of peer effects in the market for new cell phones. Our analysis builds on de-identified data from Facebook that combine information on social networks with information on users’ cell phone models. To identify peer effects, we use variation in friends’ new phone...

In the seminal rational inattention model of Matĕjka and McKay (2015), logit demand arises from the discrete choice of agents who are uncertain about choice payoffs and who have access to a flexible, costly information acquisition technology (RI-logit). A notable limitation of this powerful...