We consider a political agency model where voters learn information about some policy-relevant variable, which they can ignore when it impedes their desire to hold optimistic beliefs. Voters' excessive tendency to sustain optimism may result in inefficient political decision-making because...

Firms compete by choosing both a price and a design from a family of designs that can be represented as demand rotations. Consumers engage in costly sequential search among firms. Each time a consumer pays a search cost he observes a new offering. An offering consists of a price quote and a new...

Agents work for their own reputations when young but for their firms when old. An individual with an established reputation cannot credibly commit to exerting effort when working alone. However, by hiring and working with juniors of uncertain reputation, seniors will have incentives to exert...

We consider borrowers with the opportunity to raise funds from a competitive baking sector, that shares information about borrowers, and an alternative hidden lender. We highlight that the presence of the hidden lender restricts the contracts that can be obtained from the banking sector and that...

We consider borrowers with the opportunity to raise funds from a competitive banking sector that shares information, and from an alternative hidden lender. The presence of the hidden lender restricts the contracts that can be obtained from the banking sector. In equilibrium some borrowers obtain...

We consider borrowers with the opportunity to raise funds from a competitive banking sector that shares information about borrowers, and an alternative hidden lender. We highlight that the presence of the hidden lender restricts the contracts that can be obtained from the banking sector and that...

We consider borrowers with the opportunity to raise funds from a competitive banking sector that shares information, and from an alternative hidden lender. The presence of the hidden lender allows borrowers to conceal poor results from their banks and, thus, restricts the contracts that can be...

In criminal organizations, diffusing information widely throughout the organization might lead to greater internal efficiency (in particular, since these organizations are self-sustaining, through enhancing trust). However, this may come at the cost of leaving the organization more vulnerable to...

This paper develops a framework for the analysis of how asymmetric information impacts on adverse selection and market efficiency.  We adopt Akerlof's (1970) unit-demand model extended to a setting with multidimensional public and private information.  Adverse selection and efficiency are...