We study the optimal entry fee in a symmetric private value first-price auction with signaling, in which the participation decisions and the auction outcome are used by an outside observer to infer the bidders’ types. We show that this auction has a unique fully separating equilibrium bidding...

A risky skill game is a game in which skill plays an important role but outcomes are also strongly influenced by random factors. Examples are poker or blackjack but also many economic activities like trading on financial markets. In an online experiment we let subjects choose how often they want...

This paper analyzes the time-varying credibility of the Fed's inflation target in an empirical macro model with asymmetric information, where the public has to learn about the actual inflation target from the Fed's interest rate policy. To capture the evolving communication strategy of the Fed,...

In models of certification possible restrictions on the nature of the fee structures are commonly analyzed. We show that they are irrelevant for the certifier's ability to maximize profits and trade efficiency. Our results establish that certification schemes involve two substitutable...

I develop new results on uniqueness and comparative statics of equilibria in the Crawford and Sobel (1982) strategic information transmission game. For a class of utility functions, I demonstrate that logconcavity of the density implies uniqueness of equilibria inducing a given number of...

I study the optimal regulation of a firm producing two goods. The firm has private information about its cost of producing either of the goods. I explore the ways in which the optimal allocation differs from its one dimensional counterpart. With binding constraints in both dimensions, the...

We study strategic information transmission in a Sender-Receiver game where players' optimal actions depend on the realization of multiple signals but the players disagree on the relative importance of each piece of news. We characterize a statistical environment - featuring symmetric loss...

We study a tractable two-dimensional model of price discrimination. Consumers combine a rigid with a more flexible choice, such as choosing the location of a house and its quality or size. We show that the optimal pricing scheme involves no bundling if consumer types are affiliated. Conversely,...

We study a model of managerial incentive problems where a manager chooses the first two moments of his firm's profit distribution - mean and volatility - along an efficient frontier. Assuming that managers differ with respect to their marginal cost of effort and their risk aversion we explore...

We develop a model to explain two-way migration of high-skilled individuals between countries that are similar in their economic characteristics. High-skilled migration is explained by a combination of two features: In both countries there is a continuum of workers with differing abilities,...