We analyze a strategic trading model where an overconfident insider is required to publicly disclose his trades after the fact. We find the more confident insider is more concerned about the effect the initial trading has on the future.

We consider a two-period model in which duopolists sell experience goods and practice behavior-based price discrimination (BBPD). We give general conditions for when firms should offer a lower price to existing customers (‘pay-to-stay’) or to new customers (‘pay-to-switch’). We also...

This note shows that when the designer of a contest wishes the winner have high ability, she is better off giving a head start to one of the contestants even if they are ex-ante identical. If the contestants are ex-ante asymmetric, the designer should give a head start to the one who is more...

We study a model of strategic persuasion based on the theory of cheap talk, in which a better-informed agent manipulates two decision-makers’ joint decision on alternative proposals. With the heterogeneity of two decision-makers’ value of the outside option, only the decision-maker with the...

We model a reputation game, in which a sequence of short-run players chooses if to interact with a long-run player. Although beliefs may be identical, choices may be different, as not-interacting can lead the long-run player to improve on effort.

We consider a two-player all-pay auction with symmetric independent private values that are uniformly distributed. The designer chooses the size of a head start that is given to one of the players. The designer’s objective is to maximize a convex combination of the expected highest effort and...

We study the strategic interaction between a decision maker who needs to take a binary decision but is uncertain about relevant facts and an informed expert who can send a message to the decision maker but has a preference over the decision. We show that the probability that the expert can...

Recent research on the Condorcet Jury Theorem has proven that informative voting (that is, voting according to one’s signal) is not necessarily rational. With two alternatives, rational voting typically leads to the election of the correct alternative, in spite of the fact that not all voters...

Kuhn’s Theorem shows that extensive games with perfect recall can equivalently be analyzed using mixed or behavioral strategies, as long as players are expected utility maximizers. This note constructs an example that illustrates the limits of Kuhn’s Theorem in an environment with ambiguity...

This paper examines how a religious festival (Ramadan) and the degree of religiosity affect cooperation and costly punishment in a public goods experiment. We find significantly higher cooperation levels outside the festival among less religious people. This behavior is consistent with a...