Effective financial reporting requires efficient information processing. This paper studies factors that determine efficient information processing. I exploit a unique small business lending setting where I am able to observe the entire codified demographic and accounting information set that...

We provide evidence of a powerful barrier to social learning: people are much less sensitive to information others discover compared to equally-relevant information they discover themselves. In a series of incentivized lab experiments, we ask participants to guess the color composition of balls...

Farmer field days (FFDs) are a tool used to transfer knowledge about new technologies from trained farmers to others in their communities. However, studies show mixed results for the effectiveness of FFDs for information diffusion. We conducted experimental auctions for agricultural inputs with...

Using detailed project-level data, we document a novel mechanism through which information externalities distort investment. Firms anticipate information spillover from peers’ investment decisions and delay project exercise to learn from their peers’ outcomes. To establish a causal...

Learning or experience curves are widely used to estimate cost functions in manufacturing modeling. They have recently been introduced in policy models of energy and global warming economics to make the process of technological change endogenous. It is not widely appreciated that this is a...

The standard approach to modelling consumption/saving problems is to assume that the decisionmaker is solving a dynamic stochastic optimization problem However under realistic descriptions of utility and uncertainty the optimal consumption/saving decision is so difficult that only recently...

By inverting the optimal portfolios of mutual fund managers in a fairly general setting, which allows us to partial out the effect of risk aversion and hedging demands, we provide an estimate of perceived expected excess returns and show that they are significantly affected by experienced...

Players may categorize the strategies available to them. In many games there are different ways to categorize one's strategies (different frames) and which ones players use has implications for the outcomes realized. This paper proposes a model of agents who learn which frames to use through...

Players may categorize the strategies available to them. In many games there are different ways to categorize one's strategies (different frames) and which ones players use has implications for the outcomes realized. This paper proposes a model of agents who learn which frames to use through...