We seed noisy information to members of a real-world social network to study how information diffusion and information aggregation jointly shape social learning. Our environment features substantial social learning. We show that learning occurs via diffusion which is highly imperfect: signals...

In markets with imperfect information and heterogeneity, the information technology affects the rate at which agents meet, which in turn affects the distribution of production technologies across firms. We show that in models for such markets there are typically multiple equilibria because...

We analyze a two-player game of strategic experimentation with two-armed bandits. Each player has to decide in continuous time whether to use a safe arm with a known payoff or a risky arm whose likelihood of delivering payoffs is initially unknown. The quality of the risky arms is perfectly...

We report experimental results on exclusive dealing inspired by the literature on "naked exclusion.'' Our key findings are: First, exclusion of a more efficient entrant is a widespread phenomenon in lab markets. Second, allowing incumbents to discriminate between buyers increases exclusion rates...

The seminal work by Grossman and Hart (1986) made the study of firm boundaries susceptible to formal economic analysis, and illuminated an important role for markets in providing incentives. In this essay, I discuss some new directions that the literature has taken since. As a central challenge,...