We analyze communication about the social returns to investment in a public good. We model two agents who have private information about these returns as well as their own taste for cooperation, or social preferences. Before deciding to contribute or not, each agent submits an unverifiable...

We investigate experimentally whether individuals or groups are more lied to, and how lying depends on the group size and the monetary loss inflicted by the lie. We employ an observed cheating game, where an individual's misreport of a privately observed number can monetarily benefit her while...

We study a standard collective action problem in which successful achievement of a group interest requires costly participation by some fraction of its members. How should we model the internal organization of these groups when there is asymmetric information about the preferences of their...

We analyze the offering, asking, and granting of help or other benefits as a three-stage game with bilateral private information between a person in need of help and a potential help-giver. Asking entails the risk of rejection, which can be painful: since unawareness of the need can no longer be...