This paper studies reputation effects in games with a single long-run player whose choice of stage-game strategy is imperfectly observed by his opponents. The authors obtain lower and upper bounds on the long-run player's payoff in any Nash equilibrium of the game. If the long-run player's...

Imagine that one player, the "incumbent," competes with several "entrants." Each entrant competes only with the incumbent, but obs erves play in all contests. Previous work shows that as more and more entrants are added, the incumbent's reputation may dominate play of the game, if the entrants...

This paper analyses the possibility and the consequences of rational bubbles in a dynamic economy where financially constrained firms demand and supply liquidity. Bubbles are more likely to emerge, the scarcer the supply of outside liquidity and the more limited the pledgeability of corporate...

A central tenet of economics is that individuals respond to incentives. For psychologists and sociologists, in contrast, rewards and punishments are often counterproductive, because they undermine "intrinsic motivation". We reconcile these two views, showing how performance incentives offered by...

Pigovian taxation of externalities has limited appeal if the tortfeaser has insufficient resources to pay the damage when it occurs. To defend Pigovian taxation in the presence of judgement-proof agents, its proponents point at the many institutions extending liability to third parties. Yet...

Many incentives in organizations arise not through explicit formal incentive contracts but rather implicitly through career concerns. This paper models career concerns through agents trying to manipulate the market assessment of their future productivity. The information flow from current...

The paper is a first attempt at modeling the idea of group reputation as an aggregate of individual reputations. A member's current incentives are affected by his past behavior and, because his track record is observed only with noise, by the group's past behavior as well. The paper thus studies...