This study investigates dishonest behavior among cocoa middlemen in Côte d'Ivoire, focusing on the role of observability and financial penalties in deterring such behavior. Using on a modified version of the "die-under-cup task", we examine the cheating behaviors of 151 cocoa middlemen over...

We use the tools of mechanism design, combined with the theory of risk measures, to analyze how a cash constrained owner of an asset with known stochastic returns raises capital from a population of investors that differ in their risk aversion and budget constraints. The issuer partitions the...

In this paper we attempt to compare theoretically and experimentally three models of strategic information transmission. In particular we focus on the models by Crawford & Sobel (1982), Lai (2010) and Ehses-Friedrich (2011). These three models differ in the information that the receiver...

It is commonly believed that borrowers cannot be anonymous in unsecured credit relations because anonymity heavily reduces the scope for punishment and therefore makes credit unfeasible except for very special circumstances. However, we demonstrate that credit is generally feasible even if...

We present a three-person, two-period bargaining game with private information. A single proposer is seeking to secure agreement to a proposal under either majority or unanimity rule. If the first period proposal fails, the game ends immediately with an exogenously given "breakdown" probability....

This paper studies the optimal disclosure of information about an agent's talent when it consists of two components. The agent observes the first component of his talent as his private type, and reports it to a principal to perform a task which reveals the second component of his talent. Based...

Principal-agent models take outside options, determining participation and incentive constraints, as given. We construct a general equilibrium model where workers' reservation wages and the maximum punishment acceptable before workers quit are instead determined endogenously. We simultaneously...

This paper explores whether professional macroeconomic forecasters manipulate their forecasts to influence voting outcomes. We model a referendum in which a voter chooses between two policies. The voter relies on a forecaster to learn about the macroeconomic consequences of the policies. The...

We investigate how heterogeneous social preferences affect the communication of painful information in social relationships. We characterize the existence conditions for a pooling equilibrium in which individuals conceal painful information because revealing the latter would signal that they are...

We consider a dynamic model in which a principal decides what information to release about a product of unknown quality (e.g., a vaccine) to incentivize agents to experiment with the product. Assuming that the agents are long-lived and forward-looking, their incentive to wait and see other...