This paper considers a model of a rating agency with multiple clients. ach client has a separate market (end-user of the rating); the only connection among them is that the underlying qualities of the clients are correlated. In the benchmark case of individual rating, the market for each client...

Though individuals prefer to join groups with high quality peers, there are advantages to being high up in the pecking order within a group if higher ranked members of a group have greater access to the group's resources. When two organizations try to attract members from a fixed population of...

Though individuals prefer high-quality peers, there are advantages to being high up in the pecking order within a group. In this environment, sorting of agents yields an overlapping interval structure in the type space. Segregation and mixing coexist in a stable equilibrium. With transfers, this...

We study a model of collective decision making in which agents vote on the decision repeatedly until they agree, with the agents receiving no exogenous new information between two voting rounds but incurring a delay cost. Although preference conflict between the agents makes information...

Two organizations compete for high quality agents from a fixed population of heterogeneous qualities by designing how to distribute their resources among members according to their quality ranking. The peer effect induces both organizations to spend the bulk of their resources on higher ranks in...

Costly delay in negotiations can induce the negotiating parties to be more forthcoming with their information and improve the quality of the collective decision. Imposing a deadline may result in stalling, in which players at some point stop making concessions but switch back to conceding at the...