Many models in the economics literature deal with strategic situations with privately informed agents. In those models the information structure is assumed to be exogenous and common knowledge. In many applications information gathering is one of the strategic options available to agents. We...

No abstract.

We analyze the dynamic implications of learning in a large population coordination game where both the actions of the players and the communication network between these players evolve over time. We depart from the conventional models in assuming that the interaction network itself is subject to...

We examine the incentives of an interest group to provide a political decision-maker with policy-relevant information and to exert pressure on her. Both activities are costly but may induce the lobby's preferred policy. Our paper provides an integrated analysis of both lobbying activities and...

Recent research suggests that income redistribution preferences vary across identity groups. We employ a new pattern recognition technology to uncover what these groups are. Using data from the General Social Survey, we present a new stylized fact that preferences for governmental provision of...

This paper analyses the causes of managerial change and the impact of different reforms on firm performance, using survey data from 300 Ukrainian firms. The main findings are: 1) ownership and competition are linked to managerial change: de novo firms but also privatised firms experienced less...

This paper examines group formation in group-credit contracts recently popular in credit programs for the poor. The joint-liability in these contracts induces a correlation between the choice of partner and of repayment strategy. We show that this leads to non-monotone matching patterns, which...

A new family of kernels is suggested for use in heteroskedasticity and autocorrelation consistent (HAC) and long run variance (LRV) estimation and robust regression testing. The kernels are constructed by taking powers of the Bartlett kernel and are intended to be used with no truncation (or...

This paper is about freedom of choice and rigidity of choice rules as incentive devices. We study the optimal design of an agent's freedom of choice when his information is endogenous and costly to acquire. We show that curtailing the agent's authority over decision-making may be optimal even if...

The assumption of internationally identical factor intensity techniques may be one of the major causes of the HOV model's poor performance. To relax this assumption, detailed input-output data are required to compute the factor intensity techniques used in different countries; however, these...