We analyze the costs and benefits of using social image to foster virtuous behavior. A Principal seeks to motivate reputation-conscious agents to supply a public good. Each agent chooses how much to contribute based on his own mix of public-spiritedness, private signal about the value of the...

Many policy reforms involve gains for some voters at a cost borne by others, and voters may be asymmetrically informed about who gains and loses. This paper shows that the interaction of distributive politics and asymmetric information generates an adverse selection effect: when an uninformed...

This paper develops a rational theory of momentum in elections with sequential voting. We analyze a two-candidate election in which some voters are uncertain about the realization of a state variable that can affect their preferences between the candidates. Voters receive private signals about...