This article seeks to analyse processes of decision-making where multiple costly observations can be made about individual decision outcomes. It presents a simple model of a decision in which information is collected sequentially. Most economic models of sequential collection of costly...

We explore the impact of information technology on the level of premiums paid for individual health insurance by asking which kinds of buyers will have larger gains from the use of new technology. We compare 'asking price' data posted on an electronic insurance exchange with survey data on...

Models of expextations formation via learning by economic agents have recently been developed in the literature. Currently, the most common approach leads to complete learning in which asymptotically agents have rational expectations (though cases of instability also exist). Dynamics with...

We characterize, for any model of repeated interaction with incomplete information and signals, the information that players can learn through finite procedures robust to unilateral deviations.

We consider repeated games of complete information and imperfect monitoring, where the observation structure is given by a directed graph, i.e. all what a player learns are the actions taken by his neighbours on the graph. We prove that a generalized folk theorem holds if and only if the graph...

We consider an economic system composed of interacting potential adopters of a technology. We build a model of interindividual influence effects in which part of the links can be negative, in a context of bounded rational choice. The article shows how the sole relationships topology on a network...

In this paper we draw upon a recent body of evidence, with particular reference to material produced in the context of an ongoing OECD project on growth. We present an international comparison with special attention given to development in trends of labour productivity, allowing for human...

We develop an economic theory of ‘flexibility’, which we interpret as the discretion or ability to make a decision that others disagree with. We show that flexibility is essentially an option for the decision-maker, and can be valued as such. The value of the flexibility option is decreasing...

Economists and sociologists disagree over markets’ potential to take over functions typically performed by networks of personal connections. First among them is the reliable transmission of information. In this paper we begin from a model of labour markets where social ties are stronger...

We develop an urban-search model in which firms post wages. When all workers are identical, the Diamond paradox holds, i.e. there is a unique wage in equilibrium even in the presence of search and spatial frictions. This wage is affected by spatial and labour costs. When workers differ according...