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...

This paper provides a sufficient condition under which a general screening problem can be reduced, without the principal’s payoff loss, to one with the single crossing property. The sufficient condition requires the agent’s types to be ordered in a way that two marginal rates of substitution...

A sender is seeking approval from the receiver(s). He conducts experiments to two receivers with identical preferences sequentially. The first receiver can approve, reject, or delay the decision to the next receiver while the second receiver must approve or reject. Upon delay, the first receiver...

Principal-agent interactions in which the agent can preemptively signal prosociality can achieve higher levels of trust and reciprocity if both parties care about social esteem (Boulu-Reshef and Kuechle, 2023). However, it is unclear to what extent social esteem is necessary for this outcome. In...

In this paper, we empirically examine how consumers perceive patented over-the-counter pharmaceutical goods. To gauge consumer preferences for such products, we draw upon evidence from two experiments we developed and conducted. In an online randomized experiment, we demonstrate increased...

In 2019, 181 CEOs of major companies rocked the world of corporate governance when they signed the Business Roundtable Statement, endorsing the idea that corporations are meant to serve all their constituencies and not just their shareholders. Reactions were sharply divided. Some applauded the...