This paper examines the welfare effects of informational intermediation. A (shortlived) seller sets the price of a product that is sold through a (long-lived) informational intermediary. The intermediary can disclose information about the product to consumers, earns a fixed percentage of the...

Charities often send annual “thank you letters” to express gratitude to donors, but seek to defray these costs by inviting additional donations or engagement. However, the additional asks may backfire if potential donors see the thank you message as “insincere” or “manipulative.” We...

We randomize advertising content motivated by the psychology literature on sympathy generation and framing effects in mailings to about 185,000 prospective new donors in India. We find significant impact on the number of donors and amounts donated consistent with sympathy biases such as the...

Charities routinely send “thank you letters” and small gifts to express gratitude to donors but seek to defray these costs by making additional asks for donations and/or engagement. But the “ask for more” can backfire if potential donors perceive persuasive intent in the expression of...

Do new migration opportunities for rural households change the nature and extent of informal risk sharing? We experimentally document that randomly offering poor rural households subsidies to migrate leads to a 40% improvement in risk sharing in their villages. We explain this finding using 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...

We investigate the role of market transparency in repeated first-price auctions. We consider a setting with private and independent values across bidders. The values are assumed to be perfectly persistent over time.We analyze the first-price auction under three distinct disclosure regimes...

This paper develops a model of career concerns. The worker's skill is revealed through output, wage is based on expected output, and so on assessed ability. Specifically, effort increases the probability that a skilled worker achieves a one-time breakthrough. Effort levels at different times are...

We characterize optimal selling protocols/equilibria of a game in which an Agent first puts hidden effort to acquire information and then transacts with a Firm that uses this information to take a decision. We determine the equilibrium payoffs that maximize incentives to acquire information. Our...