We characterize an optimal mechanism for a seller with one unit of a good facing N ≥ 3 buyers and a single competitor who sells another identical unit in a second-price auction. Buyers who do not get the seller's good compete in the competitor's subsequent auction. The mechanism features...

We study a communication game between an informed sender and an uninformed receiver with repeated interactions and voluntary transfers. Transfers motivate the receiver's decision-making and signal the sender's information. Although full separation can always be supported in equilibrium, partial...

We relax the common assumption of homogeneous beliefs in principal-agent relationships with adverse selection. Principals are competitors in the product market and write contracts also on the base of an expected aggregate. The model is a version of a cobweb model. In an evolutionary learning...

I study sequential contests where the efforts of earlier players may be disclosed to later players by nature or by design. The model has many applications, including rent seeking, R&D, oligopoly, public goods provision, and tragedy of the commons. I show that information about other players'...

We study the interaction of incentives to free-ride on information acquisition and strategically delay irreversible investment in environments in which multiple firms evaluate an investment opportunity. In our model, two firms decide how quickly to privately obtain information about the...

We study dynamic signaling in a game of stochastic stakes. Each period, a privately informed agent of binary type chooses whether to continue receiving a return that is an increasing function of both her reputation and an exogenous public stakes variable or to irreversibly exit the game. A...

I study how the arrival of new private information affects bargaining outcomes. A seller makes offers to a buyer. The buyer is privately informed about her valuation, and the seller privately observes her stochastically changing cost of delivering the good. Prices fall gradually at the early...

We show that information exchange via disclosure is possible in equilibrium even when it is certain that whenever one party learns the truth, the other loses. The incentive to disclose results either from an expectation of disclosure being reciprocated -- the quid pro quo motive -- or from the...

What are the value and form of optimal persuasion when information can be generated only slowly? We study this question in a dynamic model in which a `sender' provides public information over time subject to a graduality constraint, and a decision-maker takes an action in each period. Using a...

We study the interaction between an agent of uncertain type, whose project gives rise to both good and bad news, and an evaluator who must decide if and when to fire the agent. The agent can hide bad news from the evaluator at some cost, and will do so if this secures her a significant increase...