This paper empirically evaluates the effects of college admissions policies on high school student performance. To this end, I build a model where high school students decide their level of effort and whether to take the college admissions test, taking into consideration how those decisions may...

This paper, prepared for the Handbook of Game Theory, volume 4 (Peyton Young and Shmuel Zamir, editors, Elsevier Press), surveys work on reputations in repeated games of incomplete information.

I study a dynamic one-sided-offer bargaining model between a seller and a buyer under incomplete information. The seller knows the quality of his product while the buyer does not. During bargaining, the seller randomly receives an outside option, the value of which depends on the hidden quality....

This paper introduces a model of endogenous growth through basic and applied research. Basic research differs from applied research in the nature and the magnitude of the generated spillovers. We propose a novel way of empirically identifying these spillovers and embed them in a general...

Bidders’ risk attitudes have key implications for choices of revenue-maximizing auction formats. In ascending auctions, bid distributions do not provide information about risk preference. We infer risk attitudes using distributions of transaction prices and participation decisions in ascending...

A recent literature has developed that combines two prominent empirical approaches to ex ante policy evaluation: randomized controlled trials (RCT) and structural estimation. The RCT provides a “gold-standard" estimate of a particular treatment, but only of that treatment. Structural...

We analyze a model in which agents make investments and then match into pairs to create a surplus. The agents can make transfers to reallocate their pretransfer ownership claims on the surplus. Mailath, Postlewaite, and Samuelson (2013) showed that when investments are unobservable, equilibrium...

This paper studies entry and capacity decisions by dialysis providers in the U.S. We estimate a structural model where providers make strategic continuous choices of capacities based on private information about own costs and beliefs about competitors’ behaviors. We evaluate the impact on...

We provide a new and superior measure of U.S. GDP, obtained by applying optimal signal-extraction techniques to the (noisy) expenditure-side and income-side estimates. Its properties - particularly as regards serial correlation - differ markedly from those of the standard expenditure-side...

The repeated game literature studies long run/repeated interactions, aiming to understand how repetition may foster cooperation. Conditioning future behavior on past play is crucial in this endeavor. For most situations of interest a given player does not directly observe the actions chosen by...