People often wonder why economists analyze models whose assumptions are known to be false, while economists feel that they learn a great deal from such exercises. We suggest that part of the knowledge generated by academic economists is case-based rather than rule-based. That is, instead of...

We propose a model of history-dependent risk attitude, allowing a decision maker’s risk attitude to be affected by his history of disappointments and elations. The decision maker recursively evaluates compound risks, classifying realizations as disappointing or elating using a threshold rule....

We study dynamic bargaining with uncertainty over the buyer's valuation and the seller's outside option. A long-lived seller makes offers to a long-lived buyer whose value is private information. There may exist a short-lived buyer whose value is higher than that of the long-lived buyer. The...

In finite samples, the use of a slightly endogenous but highly relevant instrument can reduce mean-squared error (MSE). Building on this observation, I propose a moment selection criterion for GMM in which moment conditions are chosen based on the MSE of their associated estimators rather than...

This paper studies a class of continuous-time stochastic games in which the actions of a long-run player have a persistent effect on payoffs. For example, the quality of a firm's product depends on past as well as current effort, or the level of a policy instrument depends on a government's past...

We study a decision maker who faces a dynamic decision problem in which the process of information arrival is subjective. By studying preferences over menus of acts, we derive a sequence of utility representations that captures the decision maker’s uncertainty about the beliefs he will hold...

Technological progress is typically a result of trial-and-error research by competing firms. While some research paths lead to the innovation sought, others result in dead ends. Because firms benefit from their competitors working in the wrong direction, they do not reveal their dead-end...

How does the central bank's incentive to build a reputation affect speculators' ability to coordinate and the likelihood of the devaluation outcome during speculative currency crises? What role does market information play in speculators' coordination and the central bank's reputation building?...

Using data on MZ (monozygotic, identical) female twins from the Minnesota Twin Registry, we estimate the causal effect of schooling on completed fertility, probability of being childless and age at first birth, using the within-MZ twins methodology. We find strong cross-sectional associations...

This paper studies the aggregate consequences of individual learning in the labor market. Specifically, I examine this issue in a model of directed search on the job. Once matched, a firm-worker pair gradually learns the match-specific quality, taking the history of realized production as...