Evidence increasingly points to the importance of reference-dependence in predicting consumer behavior. We utilize detailed data from penny auctions, which first appeared as an internet phenomenon in the late 2000's, to uncover how consumers' prior experiences predict their willingness to try a...

We study a hierarchical Bayesian persuasion game with a sender, a receiver, and several potential intermediaries, generalizing the framework of Kamenica and Gentzkow (2011). The sender must be persuasive through a hierarchy of intermediaries to reach the final receiver, whose action affects all...

We propose a simple commitment mechanism prior to a public goods contribution game. Each player simultaneously and independently proposes a deduction rate, which serves as a proposal for the rate by which the return on private investment accounts will be reduced. The group deduction rate is...

Although contests are recognized theoretically as a highly effective method of motivation, the competitive nature of contests may generate unintended negative effects on social interactions in more general settings beyond contests. Using a laboratory experiment of real effort tasks with...

We study the incentives of players to disclose information on their private valuations of the prize ahead of a rent-seeking contest. We show that information sharing can arise in equilibrium if types are concentrated enough, whereas sharing information is strictly dominated if types are...

Individual contributions to public goods can be framed in absolute or relative metrics. We examine the effects of asymmetric framing and informational feedback on contributions when group members are heterogeneously endowed. We develop a reference-dependent theory in which the absolute or...

In this paper, we show that pure strategy Nash Equilibria in Prime Game and Expansive Game can be linked through an invertible mapping, with which the pure strategy Nash Equilibrium in Prime Game can be easily derived from Expansive Game. Our results provide a tool to solve pure strategy Nash...

We study the optimal information disclosure policy in a two-player all-pay auction contest with one-sided asymmetric information in both simultaneous move setup and sequential move setup. The designer can pre-commit to a signal device that generates a type-dependent distribution, signaling the...