Unfavorable news are often delivered under the disguise of vagueness. Our theory-driven laboratory experiment investigates this strategic use of vagueness in voluntary disclosure and asks whether there is scope for policy to improve information transmission. We find that vagueness is profitably...

We study a seller's optimal mechanism for maximizing revenue when the buyer may present evidence relevant to the buyer's value, or when different types of buyer have a differential ability to communicate. We introduce a dynamic bargaining protocol in which the buyer first makes a sequence of...

Consider managers evaluating their employees\' performances. Should managers justify their subjective evaluations? Suppose a manager\'s evaluation is private information. Justifying her evaluation is costly but limits the principal\'s scope for distorting her evaluation of the employee. I show...

In models of non-deterministic contest, players exert irreversible effort in order to increase their probability of winning a prize. The most prominent functional form of the win probability in the literature is the so-called logit" contest success function. We provide a simple micro-foundation...

The paper aims at a conceptual contribution to the normative economic analysis of rural de-velopment (RD) policies. RD is regarded as a problem of interaction between individuals; (lacking) structural change or the (missing) integration of externalities are therefore recon-structed as...

Proxy wars are a key pattern of political conflict and interstate competition. Rather than resorting to direct conflicts, which are costly and entail a higher level of uncertainty, governments may opt for proxy wars, which may last longer, but are less costly and render them more immune to...

One of the primary objectives of protests and demonstrations is to bring social, political, or economic issues to the attention of politicians and the wider population. While protests can have a mobilizing and persuading effect, they may reduce support for their cause if they are perceived as a...

Environmental impact assessment is currently the major Brazilian institution that routinely seeks community input about infrastructure projects. It is criticized both by activists who think it permits projects it should not and by project proponents who think that it is too slow and blocks...

This project studies collaboration in highly skilled, nationally diverse teams. An unexpected international political conflict makes national diversity more salient among existing and potential team members. I exploit this natural experiment to quantify the role of social, identity-driven, costs...

I revisit the Rubinstein (1982) model for the classic problem of price hag- gling and show that bargaining can become a 'trap,' where equilibrium leaves one party strictly worse off than if no transaction took place (e.g., the equilibrium price exceeds a buyer's valuation). This arises when one...