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...

Transparency and accountability are often regarded as crucial for good governance and the efficient organization of public affairs. To systematically explore the impact of transparency and accountability on cooperation, we conduct a series of laboratory experiments on a variation of the public...

Previous work on the effects of private income transfers has been confined to intra-family interactions. One implication of this work is that such transfers benefit recipients by insuring against labor market risks. Allowing for equilibrium labor market responses, however, one would expect the...

Previous work on the effects of private income transfers has been confined to intra-family interactions. One implication of this work is that such transfers benefit recipients by insuring against labor market risks. Allowing for equilibrium labor market responses, however, one would expect the...

We study contracting between a public good provider and users with private valuations of the good. We show that, once the provider extracts the users' private information, she benefits from manipulating the collective information received from all users when communicating with them. We derive...