We analyze the rationale for hiding information in open auction formats. In particular, we focus on the incentives for a bidder to call a price higher than the highest standing one in order to prevent the remaining active bidders from aggregating more accurate information that could be gathered...

This paper revisits the no-recall assumption in job search models with take-it-or-leave-it offers. Workers who can recall previously encountered potential employers in order to engage them in Bertrand bidding have a distinct advantage over workers without such attachments. Firms account for this...

Theoretical models of information asymmetry have identified a trade-off between the desire to learn and the desire to prevent an opponent from learning private information. This paper reports a laboratory experiment that investigates if actual bidders account for this trade-off, using a...

Because firms' takeover motives are unobservable to investors, mergers are only partially anticipated and often appear as mixed blessings for acquirers. I construct and estimate a model to study the causes and consequences of bid anticipation and information revelation in mergers. Controlling...

We study the mechanism design problem for a seller of an indivisible good in a setting where privately informed buyers can acquire additional information and refine their valuations for the good at a cost. For this setting, we propose optimal (revenue-maximizing) and efficient...

This paper reports on experiments testing the viability of markets for cheap talk information. We find that the poor quality of the information transmitted leads to a collapse of information markets. The reasons for this are surprising given the previous experimental results on cheap-talk games....