One important function of consumption is for consumers to show off their taste, virtue or wealth. While empirical observations suggest that producers take this into account, existing research has concentrated on analyzing the demand side. This paper investigates how a monopolist optimally...

In many trade environments - such as online markets - buyers fully learn their valuation for goods only after contracting. I characterize the buyer-optimal ex-ante information in such environments. Employing a classical sequential screening framework, I find that buyers prefer to remain...

We present a common value mechanism design model for an informed principal where only the principal has private information, but her one-dimensional private information is allowed to be distributed according to any probability measure. For this model we characterize the set of pure-strategy...

We develop a model of consulting (advising) where the role of the consultant is that she can reveal signals to her client which refine the client’s original private estimate of the profitability of a project. Importantly, only the client can observe or evaluate these signals, the consultant...

This paper studies the role of exchange policies as a price discrimination device in a sequential screening model with heterogeneous goods. In the first period, agents are uncertain about their ordinal preferences over a set of horizontally differentiated goods, but have private information...

This paper proposes a mechanism design approach, capable of endogenizing a monopolist's choice between selling and renting in a non-anonymous durable goods setting with short-term commitment. Allowing for mechanisms that determine the good’s allocation not only at the beginning but also at the...

We study a principal--agent model. The parties are symmetrically informed at first; the principal then designs the process by which the agent learns his type and, concurrently, the screening mechanism. Because the agent can opt out of the mechanism ex post, it must leave him with nonnegative...

The paper extends the optimal delegation framework pioneered by Holmström (1977, 1984) to a dynamic environment where, at the outset, the agent privately knows his ability to interpret decision relevant private information received later on. We show that any mechanism can be implemented by a...

In this paper we construct a model in which entrepreneurial innovations are sold into oligopolistic industries and where adverse selection problems between entrepreneurs, venture capitalists and incumbents are present. We show that as exacerbated development by better-informed venture-backed...

This field-based lab experiment investigates how people in India detect each others' caste, and with what levels of accuracy they do it. It also investigate the abilities of people to pass off as belonging to caste groups to which they do not belong. Caste-based discrimination is possible when...