We study a novel mechanism design model in which agents each arrive sequentially and choose one action from a set of actions with unknown rewards. The information revealed by the principal affects the incentives of the agents to explore and generate new information. We characterize the optimal...

Stochastic dominance is a partial order on risky assets (“gambles”) that is based on the uniform preference—of all decision-makers in an appropriate class—for one gamble over another. We modify this requirement, first, by taking into account the status quo (given by the current wealth)...

We propose a measure of riskiness of “gambles” (risky assets) that is objective: it depends only on the gamble and not on the decision maker. The measure is based on identifying for every gamble the critical wealth level below which it becomes “risky” to accept the gamble.