In markets with quality unobservable to buyers, third-party certification is often the only instrument to increase transparency. While both sellers and buyers have a demand for certification, its role differs fundamentally: sellers use it for signaling, buyers use it for inspection. Seller...

Existing theoretical and experimental studies have established that unanimity is a poor decision rule for promoting information aggregation. Despite this, unanimity is frequently used in committees making decisions on behalf of society. This paper shows that when committee members are exposed to...

We examine a setting of independent private value auctions where bidders can covertly acquire gradual information about their valuations. We demonstrate that a dynamic pivot mechanism implements the rst-best information acquisition and allocation rule. We apply our results to a commonly used...

We experimentally examine the effects of price competition in markets for experience goods where sellers can build up reputations for quality. We compare price competition to monopolistic markets and markets where prices are exogenously fixed (somewhere between the endogenous oligopoly and...

We experimentally examine the effects of price competition in markets for expe-rience goods where sellers can build up reputations for quality. We compare price competition to monopolistic markets and markets where prices are exogenously fixed (somewhere between the endogenous oligopoly and...

Pass-through determines how consumers respond to taxes. We investigate the impact of imperfect price information on pass-through of commodity taxes. Our theoretical model predicts that the pass-through rate increases with the share of well-informed consumers. Pass-through is higher for the...