Social sharing of information goods--wherein a single good is purchased and shared through a network of acquaintances such as friends or coworkers--is a significant concern for the providers of these goods. The effect of social sharing on firm pricing and profits depends critically on two...

Using controlled experiments, we examine how individuals make choices when faced with multiple options. Choice tasks are designed to mimic the selection of health insurance, prescription drug, or retirement savings plans. In our experiment, available options can be objectively ranked allowing us...

Scholarship on competition policy has begun to explore the implications of learning from behavioral research and to challenge the assumption of profit maximization at the heart of neoclassical economic theory of the firm. This scholarship is briefly reviewed, focusing on merger control....

Using paper and pencil experiments administered in senior centers, we examine decision-making performance in multi-attribute decision problems. We differentiate the effects of declining cognitive performance and changing cognitive process on decision-making performance of seniors as they age. We...

We consider how information concentration affects a seller's revenue in common value auctions. The common value is a function of n random variables partitioned among m = n bidders. For each partition, the seller devises an optimal mechanism. We show that, whenever the value function allows...

I consider several variants of dictator and ultimatum games in which the proposer not only offers an allocation of funds but also selects the rules that will govern that distribution. In the dictator/ultimatum choice game, the proposer first selects whether or not the receiver will have the...

Previous studies have demonstrated that a multitude of options can lead to choice overload, reducing decision quality. Through controlled experiments, we examine sequential choice architectures that enable the choice set to remain large while potentially reducing the effect of choice overload. A...

We investigate the impact of patient-obtained medical information (POMI) on the physician-patient relationship when patients, as a group, are heterogeneously informed and a physician's interests do not coincide with those of her patients. Introducing additional well-informed patients to the...

Using paper and pencil experiments administered in senior centers, we examine decision-making performance in multi-attribute decision problems. We find a significant decline in performance with age due to reduced reliance on common heuristics among our oldest subjects. Subjects in their early...

We study how group membership affects behavior both when group members can and cannot interact with each other. Our goal is to isolate the contrasting forces that spring from group membership: a free-riding incentive leading to reduced effort and a sense of social responsibility that increases...