We propose a simple model of borrower optimism in competitive lending markets with asymmetric information. Borrowers in our model engage in self-deception to arrive at a belief that optimally trades off the anticipatory utility benefits and material costs of optimism. Lenders' contract design...

This paper examines simple parimutuel betting games under asymmetric information,with particular attention to differences between markets in which bets are submittedsimultaneously versus sequentially. In the simultaneous parimutuel betting market, all(symmetric and asymmetric) Bayesian-Nash...

A robust nding of repeated public goods experiments is that high initialcontribution rates sharply decline towards the end. This paper reports onan exploratory experiment designed to discover whether such a decline is simply triggered by the usual experimental practice of publicly informing...

This paper examines finite parimutuel betting games with asymmetric information, with particular attention to differences between sequential and simultaneous settings, and betweenfully rational and myopic ("price taking") behavior. In the simultaneous parimutuel market,all (symmetric and...

The common prior assumption asserts that the beliefs of agents in different states of theworld are their posteriors based on a common prior and possibly some private signal. Commonpriors are pervasive in most economic models of incomplete information, oligopoly models withasymmetrically informed...

We adopt an evolutionary approach to investigate whether and when condi-tional cooperation can explain the voluntary contribution phenomenon oftenobserved in public goods experiments and in real life. Formally, conditionalcooperation is captured by a regret parameter describing how much an...

Are reforms towards individual taxation politically feasible? Are they desirable from a welfare perspective? We develop a method to answer such questions and apply it to the US federal income tax since the 1960s. Main findings are: As of today, Pareto-improvements require a move away from joint...

In Buy-It-Now auctions, sellers can post a take-it-or-leave-it price offer prior to an auction. While the literature almost exclusively looks at buyers in such combined mechanisms, the current paper summarizes results from the sellers' point of view. Buy-It-Now auctions are complex mechanisms...

We study all-pay auctions (or wars of attrition), where the highest bidder wins an object, but all bidders pay their bids. We consider such auctions when two bidders alternate in raising their bids and where all aspects of the auction are common knowledge including bidders.valuations. We analyze...

We develop a model of consulting (advising) where the role of the consultant is that she can reveal signals to her client which refine the client’s original private estimate of the profitability of a project. Importantly, only the client can observe or evaluate these signals, the consultant...