Consider a large market with asymmetric information, in which sellers choose whether to cooperate or deviate and ?cheat?their buyers, and buyers decide whether to re-purchase from di¤erent sellers. We model active trade relationships as links in a buyer-seller network and suggest a framework...

We invited “residents” of a virtual world who vary in real-world age and occupation to play a trust game with stakes comparable to “in world” wages. In different treatments, the lab wall was adorned with an emotively suggestive photograph, a suggestive text was added to the instructions,...

In this paper, we argue that an important function fulfilled by intermediaries is to facilitate trust by enabling social pressure towards the enforcement of informal agreements. To that end, we develop a new model that uses network theory to show that intermediaries who have exclusivity over a...