Properties of an average voting rule - the outcome being some weighted average of votes – are investigated, with particular attention to its ability to protect minorities. The unique average voting outcome is characterized with a median formula which depends on the voters’ preferred...

The goal of this paper is to study the role of unobserved human capital in entrepreneurial choice and its impact on the survival of newly created firms. Our starting point is that, when starting a new business, an entrepreneur’s labor market situation (e.g. employed or not) reflects how his...

A principal faces an agent with private information who is either honest or dishonest. Honesty involves revealing private information truthfully if the probability that the equilibrium allocation chosen by an agent who lies is small enough. Even the slightest intolerance for lying prevents full...

We consider a game of strategic experimentation where agents are restricted to an all-or-nothing sampling strategy. The strategic interaction between agents due to informational externalities is affected by the sizes of the experimentation samples and the sensitivity of information to changes in...

We extend the persuasion game to bring it squarely into the economics of advertising. We model advertising as exciting consumer interest into learning more about the product, and determine a firm's equilibrium choice of advertising content over quality information, price information, and...

We model comparative advertising as brands pushing up own brand perception and pulling down the brand image of targeted rivals. We watched all TV advertisements for OTC analgesics 2001-2005 to construct matrices of rival targeting and estimate the structural model. These attack matrices identify...

In a sample of newly created French firms, the impact of an entrepreneurís education on the firm's survival varies widely depending on his previous labor market situation. While it is strongly positive for the overall population, it is much weaker or insignificant for entrepreneurs who were...

Empirical evidence suggests that most advertisements contain little direct information. Many do not mention prices. We analyse a monopoly firm’s choice of advertising content and the information disclosed to consumers. The firm advertises only product information, price information, or both;...