This paper extends choice theory by allowing for the interaction between cognitive costs and imitative dynamics. The authors experimentally investigate the role of imitation when participants face a task which is costly in cognitive terms. In order to disentangle different choice dynamics, they...

We study a model where some investors ("hedgers") are bad at information processing, while others ("speculators") have superior information-processing ability and trade purely to exploit it. The disclosure of financial information induces a trade externality: if speculators refrain from trading,...

In his classic article "An Essay on Bargaining" Schelling (1956) argues that ignorance might actually be strength rather than weakness. We test and confirm Schelling's conjecture in a simple take-it-or-leave bargaining experiment where the proposer can choose between two possible offers. Option...

We study optimal experimentation by a monopolistic platform in a two-sided market framework. The platform provider faces uncertainty about the strength of the externality each side is exerting on the other. It maximizes the expected present value of its profit stream in a continuous-time...

We apply well-known results of the econometric learning literature to a standard RBC model with unemployment. The unique REE is always expectationally stable with decreasing gain learning, and this result is robust to over-parametrisation of the econometric model relative to the minimum state...

An enduring puzzle is why credit rating agencies (CRAs) use a few categories to describe credit qualities lying in a continuum, even when ratings coarseness reduces welfare. We model a cheap-talk game in which a CRA assigns positive weights to the divergent goals of issuing firms and investors....

This paper develops a theory of how angel and venture capital markets interact. Entrepreneurs first receive angel then venture capital funding. The two investor types are ‘friends’ in that they rely upon each other׳s investments. However, they are also ‘foes,’ because at the later stage...

Using a natural voting experiment in Switzerland that encompasses a 160-year period (1848–2009), we investigate whether a higher level of complexity leads to increased reliance on expert knowledge. We find that when more referenda are held on the same day, constituents are more likely to refer...

We study an individual who faces a dynamic decision problem in which the process of information arrival is unobserved by the analyst. We derive two utility representations of preferences over menus of acts that capture the individual’s uncertainty about his future beliefs. The most general...

The political left turn in Latin America, which lagged its transition to liberalized market economies by a decade or more, challenges conventional economic explanations of voting behavior. While the implications of upward mobility for the political preferences of forward-looking voters have been...