We study markets for sensitive personal information. An agent wants to communicate with another party but any revealed information can be intercepted and sold to a third party whose reaction harms the agent. The market for information induces an adverse sorting effect, allocating the information...

We study markets for sensitive personal information. An agent wants to communicate with another party but any revealed information can be intercepted and sold to a third party whose reaction harms the agent. The market for information induces an adverse sorting effect, allocating the information...

The article shows that heterogeneous incomplete private information can explain the limited existence of guaranteed renewable health insurance (GR) contracts in an otherwise frictionless markets. We derive a unique equilibrium that can be of the form that either only a portion of the population...

Although physicians are often expected to be gatekeepers to health insurance benefits such as paid sick leave, research indicates a substantial reluctance to reject patient requests for sickness certificates. We show that private information on the patient's part creates a conflict between the...

This paper analyzes optimal product lines when consumers differ both in their taste for quality and in their desire for social image. The market outcome features partial pooling and product differentiation that is not driven by heterogeneous valuations for quality but by image concerns. A...

This paper studies a bilateral trade game where (i) the buyer is uncertain about her desired consumption amount (needs) of a perfectly divisible good and receives a signal about it, (ii) and the seller posts a take-it-or-leave-it price to the buyer. The seller's information design trades off...

This essay considers the role of reputational information in our marketplace. It explains how well-functioning marketplaces depend on the vibrant flow of accurate reputational information, and how misdirected regulation of reputational information could harm marketplace mechanisms. It then...

Consumers heterogeneously possess limited price information: captive consumers may know only one price from a seller, while informed consumers know several prices. We study a homogeneous-good oligopoly where sellers of heterogeneous costs compete on price for heterogeneously limit-informed...

This paper introduces a theory of market incompleteness based on the information transmission role of prices and its adverse impact on the provision of insurance in financial markets. We analyse a simple security design model in which the number and payoff of securities are endogenous. Agents...

Primary care physicians have two roles: the healer and the gatekeeper. We show that, due to information asymmetries, they cannot be expected to fulfill the latter role. Better gatekeepers will be poorer healers; hence all patients, both truly sick and shirkers, will strictly prefer physicians...