This paper describes a general principle that can be used to elicit honest opinions, even if risk attitudes are unknown. JEL Classification: D83

We develop a dynamic model of opinion formation in social networks when the information required for learning a parameter may not be at the disposal of any single agent. Individuals engage in communication with their neighbors in order to learn from their experiences. However, instead of...

This paper shows an equivalence result between the utility functions of secular agents who abide by a moral obligation to accumulate wealth and those of religious agents who believe that salvation is immutable and preordained by God. This result formalizes Weber's renowned thesis on the...

This paper shows an equivalence result between the utility functions of secular agents who abide by a moral obligation to accumulate wealth and those of religious agents who believe that salvation is immutable and preordained by God. This result formalizes Weber's renowned thesis on the...

We consider a dynamic general equilibrium asset pricing model with heterogeneous agents and asymmetric information. We show how agents' different methods of gathering information affect their chances of survival in the market depending upon the nature of the information and the level of noise in...

Hume (1748) challenged the idea that a general claim (e.g. "all swans are white") can be validated by empirical evidence, no matter how compelling. We examine this issue from the perspective of a tester who must accept or reject the forecasts of a potential expert. If experts can be skeptical...

We consider a contracting problem between a principal who wants to be informed about relevant stochastic processes and an expert who claims to know which process will generate the data. The data generating process is known to belong to a given class.

Why do diverse groups outperform homogeneous groups in some settings, but not in others? We show that while diverse groups experience more frictions than homogeneous ones, they are also less conformist. Homogeneous groups minimize the risk of miscoordination, but they may get stuck in an...

A decision maker, named Alice, wants to know if an expert has significant information about payoff-relevant probabilities of future events. The expert, named Bob, either knows this probability almost perfectly or knows nothing about it. Hence, both Alice and the uninformed expert face...

This paper models an agent in a multi-period setting who does not update according to Bayes' Rule, and who is self-aware and anticipates her updating behavior when formulating plans. Choice-theoretic axiomatic foundations are provided to capture updating biases that reflect excessive weight...