According to a classical argument, an employer handicaps herself if she bases hiring decisions on factors unrelated to productivity; therefore, discrimination is undermined by competition. The present paper, in contrast, argues that being discriminatory can be a commitment device that helps an...

I study Cournot competition under incomplete information about demand while assuming that market price must be non-negative for all demand realizations. Although this assumption is very natural, it has only rarely been made in the earlier literature. Yet it has important economic consequences:...

I develop a model of rent seeking with informational foundations and an arbitrary number of rent seekers, and I compare the results with Tullock's (1980) classic model where the influence activities are "black-boxed." Given the microfoundations, the welfare consequences of rent seeking can be...

We study the effects of unequal representation in the interest group system on the degree of information transmission between a lobbyist and a policymaker. Employing a dynamic cheap talk model in which the lobbyist cares instrumentally about his reputation for truthtelling, we show that the...

I study Cournot competition under incomplete information about demand while assuming that market price must be non-negative for all demand realizations. Although this assumption is very natural, it has only rarely been made in the earlier literature. Yet it has important economic consequences:...

Suppose an altruistic person, A, is willing to transfer resources to a second person, B, if B comes upon hard times. If B anticipates that A will act in this manner, B will save too little from both agents' point of view. This is the Samaritan's dilemma. The logic of the dilemma has been...

This paper studies a model of public policy with heterogenous citizens/voters and two public goods: one (roads) is chosen directly by an elected policymaker, and the other (pollution) depends stochastically on the amount of roads. Both a one-country and a two-country version of the model are...

Lobbying is potentially welfare improving if it is a form of information transmission. This paper studies when and for whom this is the case. In the model, a government (G) can redistribute income between two interest groups (A and B). Only one of them (A) has the opportunity to lobby. Lobbying...

This paper proposes an n-firm homogeneous-good Bertrand model with private information about costs. The model allows for any non-negative correlation between the cost draws and for any demand elasticity but still yields a closed-form solution. The solution is simple, in pure strategies, and...

We develop a model in which an overconfident agent learns about groups in society from observations of his and others' successes. In our model, both the agent's information and his beliefs are multi-dimensional, allowing us to study interactions between different views. Overall, society always...