This paper studies a buyer-seller game with pre-trade communication of private horizontal taste from the buyer followed by a take it or leave it offer by the seller. The amount of information transmitted improves the gains from trade, but also determines how this surplus will be shared between...

Abstract: We study the effects of improvements in eBay’s rating mechanism on seller exit and continuing sellers’ behavior. Following a large sample of sellers over time, we exploit the fact that the rating mechanism was changed to reduce strategic bias in buyer rating. That improvement did...

A sophisticated player is an individual who takes the action of the opponents, in a strategic situation, as determined by decision of rational opponents, and acts accordingly. A sophisticated agent is rational in the choice of his action, but ignores the fact that he is part of a strategic...

Behavioral economics provides several motivations for the common observation that agents appear somewhat unwilling to deviate from recent choices.More recent choices can be more salient than other choices, or more readily available in the agent's mind.Alternatively, agents may have formed...

This paper considers the financing of a research project under uncertainty about the time of completion and the probability of eventual success.The uncertainty about future success gradually diminishes with the arrival of additional funding.The entrepreneur controls the funds and can divert...

This paper models the effect of a HIV/AIDS epidemic on saving behavior and studies the welfare effects of testing for HIV. The model specifies a utility function that includes both regular consumption, and medical expenditures. Medical expenditures generate more utility if individuals are HIV...

We study the economic role of banks’ soft information, which evolved from repeated lending relationships, in the context of loan default. Using a proprietary database from one of the largest state-owned commercial banks in China, we find that the bank’s internal credit rating scores play a...

When truth conflicts with efficiency, can verbal communication destroy efficiency? Or are lies or vagueness used to hide inconvenient truths? We consider a sequential 2-player public good game in which the leader has private information about the value of the public good. This value can be low,...