E-commerce certification can signal a firm's quality, reducing information frictions and incentivizing quality upgrading. This paper examines the effect of certification on quality upgrading both econometrically and using a novel dynamic structural model. To this end, we collected data from...

We study a hierarchical Bayesian persuasion game with a sender, a receiver, and several potential intermediaries, generalizing the framework of Kamenica and Gentzkow (2011). The sender must be persuasive through a hierarchy of intermediaries to reach the final receiver, whose action affects all...

Principal-agent interactions in which the principal signals prosociality may achieve higher levels of trust and reciprocity if both parties care about social esteem. However, it is unclear whether such a separating equilibrium exists when the agent sends the signal first. This is relevant...

Consumers can prefer a price disclosure format that can cost them. Across a variety of products, we find that many consumers prefer partitioned price disclosures (i.e., separating charges into multiple line items without totals) to consolidated disclosures (i.e., those displaying the total price...

A designer relies on a costly screening device to allocate a set of goods, aiming to maximize a social welfare function. We provide conditions for one screening device to dominate another. We show that the performance of a screening device depends on two channels: (i) targeting effectiveness...

A pre-condition for employer learning is that signals at labor market entry do not fully reveal graduates' productivity. I model various distinct sources of signal imperfection such as noise and multi-dimensional types and characterize their implications for the private return to skill...

This paper provides new evidence on the capitalization of agricultural land and externalities on housing prices. We evaluate households' willingness to pay for proximity to agricultural land (regardless of farming system) on one hand, and proximity to organic land on the other. To conduct a...

This paper investigates the dynamics of product adoption under incomplete information regarding product quality. A revising agent observes a small sample of actions played in the population and also receives a private signal indicating the realized state. Using a simple heuristic, the agent...

We study a sequential screening problem in which the information structure is characterized by neither first-order stochastic dominance (FOSD) nor mean-preserving spread (MPS). Specifically, we refer to a procurement contract with privately known mean and spread of cost distribution. The...

Does exposure to aid projects affect citizens’ motivation to pay taxes? As a form of externally-led state building, foreign aid projects can affect citizens’ perceptions of their domestic institutions in unintended ways. We combine geo-coded data on World Bank aid projects and survey data...