We study the effects of an intervention aimed at identifying and containing outbreaks in a network model of contagion where social distance is endogenous. The intervention induces a fall in the risk of contagion, to which agents respond by reducing social distance. If the intervention relies on...

We consider a model of Initial Public Offerings (IPOs) where issuing firms of better quality are more reluctant to go public. IPOs either generate or destroy value depending on the type of the issuing firm, which is only observed by the issuer. We show that, when the issuer directly offers the...

We formally explore the idea that punishment of norm-breakers may be a vehicle for the older generation to teach youngsters about social norms. We show that this signaling role provides sufficient incentives to sustain costly punishing behavior. People punish norm-breakers to pass information...

In a setting where inequality is ingrained and largely unavoidable (battle of the sexes), we investigate whether subjects condition their behaviour on the gender of their co-player. In order to identify the role of culture and gender norms, we run the experiment in two countries, Norway and...

We use a simple cost-benefit analysis to derive optimal similarity judgments - addressing the question: when should we expect a decision maker to distinguish between different time periods or different prizes? Our key premise is that cognitive resources are costly and are to be deployed only...

In a market where sellers are endowed with heterogeneous qualities of the same good and are more informed than buyers, high quality sellers' chances to trade might depend on their ability to inform buyers about the quality of the goods they offer. We study under what conditions and to what...