Interdependencies in consumer behavior stem from either status-seeking consumption or compliance with social norms. This paper analyzes how a consumption act changes from a means to signal the consumer's status to a means of norm compliance. It is shown that such a transformation can only be...

In the economic analysis of liability law, information about accident risk and how it can be influenced by precautions is commonly taken for granted. However, a profound understanding of the relationship between care and accident risk often requires learning-by-doing. In a two-period model, we...

We develop a model of social learning from complementary information: Short-lived agents sequentially choose from a large set of flexibly correlated information sources for prediction of an unknown state, and information is passed down across periods. Will the community collectively acquire the...

We study observational learning among agents with coordination motives. On a discrete time line, communities of agents receive private information about an uncertain state, observe some predecessors' actions, and then take their own action. An agent's payoff is both state-dependent and...

We study optimal subsidies for renewable energy (RE) generation to internalize external benefits from intertemporal learning-by-doing spillovers, taking into account increasing marginal costs at the industry level due to limited availability of sites suitable for RE. We find that the optimal RE...

We study a two-player dynamic investment model with information externalities and provide necessary and sufficient conditions for a unique switching equilibrium. Within this setup, we ask whether policymakers should interfere when better informed agents make individual investment decisions. We...

We examine wage competition in a model where identical workers choose the number of jobs to apply for and identical firms simultaneously post a wage. The Nash equilibrium of this game exhibits the following properties: (i) an equilibrium where workers apply for just one job exhibits unemployment...

Software is a good with very special economic characteristics. Taking a general definition of software as its starting-point, this article systematically elaborates the central qualities of the commodity which have implications for its production and cost structure, the demand, the...

We examine wage competition in a model where identical workers choose the number of jobs to apply for and identical firms simultaneously post a wage. The Nash equilibrium of this game exhibits the following properties: (i) an equilibrium where workers apply for just one job exhibits unemployment...