The unskilled-and-unaware problem is a cognitive illusion resulting in a negative relationship between one's skill level and self-assessment bias: the less skilled are, on average, more unaware of the absolute and relative quality of their performance. In this paper, we study whether, and to...

Recently, it has been argued that the evidence in social science research suggests that deceiving subjects in an experiment does not lead to a significant loss of experimental control. Based on this assessment, experimental economists were counseled to lift their de facto prohibition against...

I present a brief classroom demonstration illustrating Bertrand price undercutting. The classroom demonstration is appropriate for Micro Principles, and both intermediate and upper level undergraduate, as well as graduate classes in micro, Industrial Organization, and Game Theory

We propose a computational model to study (the evolution of) post-secondary education. “Consumers” who differ in quality shop around for desirable colleges or universities. “Firms” that differ in quality signal the availability of their services to desirable students. As long as they...

In this paper we address an asymmetric information problem in the fundraising industry, the fundraising problem. The problem arises from donors' lack of information about the quality of charities that solicit donations. We focus on one particular solution of this problem, certification, where an...

We analyze tournaments of heterogeneous players from an organizer's perspective. Using a simple model of a noisy tournament, we demonstrate how the likelihood of selecting the best player, here termed the "predictive power" of a tournament, depends on the tournament format, the distribution of...