A decision maker (DM) considers the acquisition of a multi-attribute object with uncertain qualities which can be discovered at a cost. DM's problem is to decide how much to invest in the discovery and whether to adopt or discard based on partial information. We characterize the solution in some...

We analyze data pricing and targeted advertising. Advertisers seek to tailor their spending to the value of each consumer. A monopolistic data provider sells cookies -- informative signals about individual consumers' preferences. We characterize the set of consumers targeted by the advertisers...

We propose a model of data provision and data pricing. A single data provider controls a large database that contains information about the match value between individual consumers and individual firms (advertisers). Advertisers seek to tailor their spending to the individual match value. The...

Different markets are cleared by different types of prices - a universal price for all buyers and sellers in some markets, seller-specific prices that are uniform across buyers in others, and personalized prices tailored to both the buyer and the seller in yet others. We introduce the notion of...

We develop a model of data pricing and targeted advertising. A monopolistic data provider determines the price to access "cookies," i.e., informative signals about individual consumers' preferences. The demand for information is generated by advertisers who seek to tailor their spending to the...

From the regulation of sports to lawmaking in parliament, in many situations one group of people (“agents”) make decisions that affect the payoffs of others (“principals”) who may offer action-contingent transfers in order to sway the agents' decisions. Prat and Rustichini (2003)...

Expert advice is often biased in ways that benefit the advisor. We demonstrate how self-deception helps advisors be biased while preserving their self-image as ethical and identify limits to advisors' ability to self-deceive. In experiments where advisors recommend one of two investments to a...

We analyze the canonical nonlinear pricing model with limited information. A seller offers a menu with a finite number of choices to a continuum of buyers with a continuum of possible valuations. By revealing an underlying connection to quantization theory, we derive the optimal finite menu for...

A universal type space of interdependent expected utility preference types is constructed from higher-order preference hierarchies describing (i) an agent's (unconditional) preferences over a lottery space; (ii) the agent's preference over Anscombe-Aumann acts conditional on the unconditional...