Developing a considered response to a question typically takes a long time, which may tempt a questionee to provide an ill-considered response. This possibility can make the questioner suspect that a prompt response is ill-considered, even if it is actually the result of deliberation. If the...

We consider common-value voting when a variable that is independent of the payoff-relevant state determines the meaning and precision of voters' private signals about the payoff-relevant state. Multiple senders sharing the same objective as the voters receive noisy signals that are contingent on...

We consider a problem of allocating multiple identical objects to a group of agents and collecting payments. Each agent may receive several objects and has quasi-linear preferences with a submodular valuation function. It is known that Walrasian mechanisms are manipulable. We investigate the...

We attempt to formulate and explain two types of self-fulfilling prophecy, called the Pygmalion effect (if a supervisor thinks her subordinates will succeed, they are more likely to succeed) and the Galatea effect (if a person thinks he will succeed, he is more likely to succeed). To this...

This article studies the effects of peer pressure on the incentives of risk-averse agents. It defines the peer pressure function and then assumes that each agent feels peer pressure not only when his effort level is below the standard level, but also when it is above that level. It also supposes...

This paper studies the role played by the social norms of working hours in a household labor- leisure and fertility decision model. We suppose that social norms enforce workers not to deviate from the ideal level of working hours, which depends on past and current observations of working hours...

We analyze a simple task-assignment model in which a principal assigns a task to one of two agents depending on the state. If the agents have standard concave utility, the principal assigns the task to an agent with the highest productivity in each state. In contrast, if the agents are loss...