We study the informed-principal problem in a bilateral asymmetric information trading setting with interdependent values and quasi-linear utilities. The informed seller proposes a mechanism and voluntarily certifies information about the good's characteristics. When the set of certifiable...

We examine the influence of guilt and trust on the performance of credence goods markets. An expert can make a promise to a consumer first, whereupon the consumer can express her trust by paying an interaction price before the expert's provision and charging decisions. We argue that the expert's...

We examine the influence of guilt and trust on the performance of credence goods markets. An expert can make a promise to a consumer first, whereupon the consumer can express her trust by paying an interaction price before the expert's provision and charging decisions. We argue that the expert's...

We study the effect of noise due to exogenous information distortions in the context of Bayesianpersuasion. In particular, we ask whether more noise (a la Blackwell) is always harmful forthe information designer, i.e., the sender. We show that in general this is not the case. Weprovide a...

We model firms' quality disclosure and pricing in the presence of cursed consumers, who fail to be sufficiently skeptical about undisclosed quality. We show that neither competition nor the presence of sophisticated consumers necessarily protect cursed consumers from being exploited....

Daily deal websites help small local merchants to attract new consumers. A strategy adopted by some websites is to continually track and display the number of deals sold by a merchant. We investigate the strategic implications of displaying deal sales and the website's incentive to implement...

Using a standard strategic pricing game, I determine how sellers set prices when facing buyers who are “rationally inattentive” to information about product quality. Two cases are studied: strategically sophisticated buyers who are rationally inattentive to exogenous information about...

A market where short-lived customers interact with a long-lived expert is considered. An expert privately observes whether or not a particular treatment is necessary for his customers and has an incentive to recommend the treatment even if it is unnecessary. Customers imperfectly observe the...

Product information websites have become ubiquitous in supporting B2C E-Commerce. This paper explores their impact on firm profitability, consumer surplus, and social welfare. Using an analytical model, we show that firms take advantage of such infomediaries and reduce their own information...

We study how joint delegation of production and disclosure choices alters the incentives that firm owners offer to their managers. Our first set of results shows how the incentive weights that owners place on revenues are affected by firm characteristics and by whether their manager chooses ex...