Goods and services---public housing, medical appointments, schools---are often allocated to individuals who rank them similarly but differ in their preference intensities. We characterize optimal allocation rules when individual preferences are known and when they are not. Several insights...

We study the impacts of incomplete information on centralized one-to-one matching markets. We focus on the commonly used Deferred Acceptance mechanism (Gale and Shapley, 1962). We show that many complete-information results are fragile to a small infusion of uncertainty

Most doctors in the NRMP match with one of their most-preferred internship programs. However, surveys indicate doctors’ preferences are similar, suggesting a puzzle: how can so many doctors match with their top choices when positions are scarce? We provide one possible explanation. We show...

Many committees - juries, political task forces, etc. - spend time gathering costly information before reaching a decision. We report results from lab experiments focused on such information-collection processes. We consider decisions governed by individuals and groups and compare how voting...

The focus of this paper is the endogenous formation of peer groups. We study a model in which agents choose their peers prior to making decisions on multiple issues. Agents differ in how much they value the decision outcomes on one issue relative to another. While each individual can collect...

Many committees--juries, political task forces, etc.--spend time gathering costly information before reaching a decision. We report results from lab experiments focused on such information-collection processes. We consider decisions governed by individuals and groups and compare how voting rules...

We use laboratory experiments to test for one of the foundations of the rational voter paradigm - that voters respond to probabilities of being pivotal. We exploit a setup that entails stark theoretical effects of information concerning the preference distribution (as revealed through polls) on...