The decision maker receives signals imperfectly correlated with an unobservable state variable and must take actions whose payoffs depend on the state. The state randomly changes over time. In this environment, we examine the performance of simple linear updating rules relative to Bayesian...

We study Colonel Blotto games with sequential battles and a majoritarian objective. For a large class of contest success functions, the equilibrium is unique and characterized by an even split: Each battle that is reached before one of the players wins a majority of battles is allocated the same...

In equilibrium play of a two-round tournament we find that underdogs exert more effort in the opening round while favorites save more effort for the final. Ability differences between players are therefore compressed in the opening round so upsets are more likely, and amplified in the final so...

We examine ascending auctions with independent private values and a buyout option. The buyout option gives each buyer the opportunity to end the auction prematurely and acquire the object for a fixed price. We fully characterize the unique symmetric equilibrium and show that buyers with...

We develop a model of statistical discrimination in criminal trials. Agents carry publicly observable labels of no economic significance (race, etc.) and choose to commit crimes if their privately observed utility from doing so is high enough. A crime generates noisy evidence, and defendants are...

We develop a model in which individuals compete for a fixed pool of prizes by investing effort in a contest. Individuals belong to two separate and identifiable groups. We say that the contest is discriminatory if a lower share of prizes is reserved for one group than for the other. We show that...

We deem populism as a politician's effort to appeal to a large group of voters with limited information regarding a policy-relevant state of nature. In our model, the populist motive makes it impossible for political candidates to communicate their information to voters credibly. We show that...

The low representation of female workers in elite jobs is sometimes attributed to a tail effect: If the human capital distribution exhibits less variation among females than among males, then even with comparable average human capital there will be fewer females in the right tail than males....

In equilibrium play of a two-round tournament we find that underdogs exert more effort in the opening round while favorites save more effort for the final. Ability differences between players are therefore compressed in the opening round so upsets are more likely, and amplified in the final so...