Many facts are learned through the intermediation of individuals with special access to information, such as law enforcement officers, officials with a security clearance, or experts with specific knowledge. This paper considers whether societies can learn about such facts when information is...

This paper investigates how increases in concentration can be interrupted or reversed by changes in how firms compete on quality. We examine the U.S. hotel industry during the past half century. We document that starting in the early 1980s, quality competition came more in the form of costs that...

This paper investigates how increases in concentration can be interrupted or reversed by changes in how firms compete on quality. We examine the U.S. hotel industry during the past half century. We document that starting in the early 1980s, quality competition came more in the form of costs that...

Many facts are learned through the intermediation of individuals with special access to information, such as law enforcement officers, officials with a security clearance, or experts with specific knowledge. This paper considers whether societies can learn about such facts when information is...

I study reputation models in which information about the long-run player's past behavior is dispersed among short-run players. I identify two challenges to reputation building when such information is aggregated via the short-run players' actions. First, when the long-run player's action can...

Can workers from social groups of comparable productivities obtain comparable employment opportunities in the long run? We model dynamic hiring and employer learning via a general Poisson multi-armed bandit framework. Breakdown environments that reveal on-the-job mistakes rather than successes...

I study reputation models in which information about the long-run player's past behavior is dispersed among short-run players. I identify two challenges to reputation building when such information is aggregated via the short-run players' actions. First, when the long-run player's action can...

Can workers from social groups of comparable productivities obtain comparable employment opportunities in the long run? We model dynamic hiring and employer learning via a general Poisson multi-armed bandit framework. Breakdown environments that reveal on-the-job mistakes rather than successes...

Recent technologies enable matching intermediaries to engage in unprecedented levels of targeting, whereby matches finely depend on the agents' characteristics, but also favor customized (i.e., match-specific) pricing. Yet, novel regulations on the transfer of personal data, as well as a renewed...

We study platform markets in which the information about users' preferences is dispersed. First, we show how the dispersion of information introduces idiosyncratic uncertainty about participation decisions and how the latter shapes the elasticity of the demands and the equilibrium prices. We...