In a recent effort to facilitate the agricultural development in rural India, an innovative voice-based information service, Avaaj Otalo ("voice porch"), was launched by UC Berkeley, Stanford, IBM, and Development Support Center (DSC) in Gujarat, India. In this voice-based forum, participating...

Using the language of mathematics, Professor Polk Wagner has recently argued that the impossibility of fully appropriating the value of information in a rights holder leads to the surprising conclusion that expanding the degree of control of intellectual property rights will, in the long run,...

We analyze how reputation concerns of a partially informed decision-maker affect her ability to extract information from reputation-concerned advisors. Too high decision-maker's reputation concerns destroy her incentives to seek advice. However, when such concerns are low, she is tempted to...

Environmental regulations and their enforcement play a critical role in reducing emissions and their devastating effects on humanity and the environment. However, many developing countries have large informal sectors-accounting for more than 70 percent of total employment, that operate outside...